Le troiane (1967) - full transcript
Good evening.
I'm speaking from
Studio 2 on Via Teulada,
from where we'll broadcast shortly,
Euripides' tragedy of The Trojan Women.
As you can see,
there is no scenery
and if you look at
the interpreters of the work,
you'll see that they don't have
any makeup, wigs or costumes.
I'd like to tell you why.
Why we desire to present
the performance at this juncture.
It is, in other words, a rehearsal
which precedes the dress rehearsal,
which takes place
in the full performance,
with scenery, with costumes,
wigs, makeup, etc.
The reason is this:
In the preparation for a performance,
we go through several phases.
The first which takes place on a table,
where we master
the meaning of the text,
where the actors learn their lines,
after which, we begin
to get the show on its feet,
the actors unite the words
with gestures and action.
It's precisely at this moment,
in which the preparation
of the text reaches its maturation,
that all of us here,
experience a strong emotion
in noting how the words,
the author's thoughts,
in this case, the poet's,
take over.
And they reach that completeness
of expression to which,
according to us,
nothing more can be added.
You will see among the characters...
Andromache,
the wife of Hector
and mother of little Astyanax.
During the performance,
she will have a boy at her side.
But she will imagine him
and you'll have to imagine him too.
The words that she will
address to non-existent children
must become for you, true griefs
as they are related by the poet.
Hecuba, Sarah Ferrati,
is the wife of Priam.
She should be 80 years old with
white hair cut as as sign of mourning.
Well, add yourself the white hair
and imagine the hair cut off.
I mean to say that you are
our collaborator in this performance.
The sea is over there.
The Achaean fleet, after Troy's fall,
waits to put sail to the wind.
Down there, Troy destroyed,
the sea is burning.
All around here,
the camp of the Achaeans,
with the tent of Menelaus,
at the feet of which
Hecuba on the ground,
weeps over the death of her husband
and the destruction of her city.
THE TROJAN WOMEN
From the depths of salt Aegean floods,
where choirs of Nereids trip
in the mazes of the graceful dance,
I,
Poseidon,
God of the sea, come.
Never from my heart hath passed away
a kindly feeling for Troy,
since the day that Phoebus and I
set towers of stone about this land,
which now is smouldering
and overthrown,
a prey to Argive might.
Groves stand forsaken
and temples of the gods
run down with blood,
Priam lies dead,
at the very base of the altar of Zeus,
before the god who watched his home.
The Greeks convey spoils
and gold to the ships,
only waiting a favouring breeze
that after ten long years
filled with terror and destruction,
they may with joy behold
their wives and children.
Scamander's banks re-echo
long and loud the screams
of the captive maids,
as they by lot receive their masters.
Arcadia takes some,
others are assigned to Theseus' sons,
The Trojan dames not portioned out,
are in these tents,
set apart for the leaders of the host.
And with them Spartan Helen,
justly counted among the captives.
And wouldst thou see that queen of misery,
Hecuba, thou canst, for there she lies,
weeping many a bitter tear. Many.
For at Achilles' tomb, her daughter
Polyxena has died most piteously,
likewise are her children dead
and Priam too.
He is no more.
Farewell, O city prosperous once!
Farewell, ye ramparts of hewn stone.
May I address the mighty god
whom Heaven reveres
and who to my own sire
is very nigh in blood,
laying aside our former enmity?
The ties of kin
exerts no feeble spell, Athena.
For thy forgiving mood, my thanks.
Somewhat have I to impart
affecting both thyself and me.
Bring thou fresh tidings
from some god, from Zeus,
or from some lesser power?
No. But on behalf of Troy.
I seek thy mighty aid,
to make it one with mine.
Hast thou laid thy former hate
aside to take compassion on Troy,
now that it is burnt to ashes?
I wish to give my former foes,
the Trojans, joy,
and on the Achaean host impose
a return that they will rue.
Why leap thou thus
from mood to mood?
Thy love and hate both go too far,
on whomsoever centred.
Thou knowest the insult done my shrine?
Surely, in the hour that
Aias tore Cassandra thence.
The Achaeans did naught,
said naught to him. For which cause...
I would join with thee
to work their bane.
My powers are ready at thy will.
What is thy intent?
A returning fraught with woe
will I impose on them.
While yet they stay on shore,
or as they cross the briny deep?
When they have set sail
from Ilium for their homes.
On them will Zeus also send
his rain and fearful hail,
and inky tempests from the sky.
And he promises
to grant me his levin-bolts
to hurl on the Achaeans
and fire their ships!
And do thou, for thy part,
make the Aegean strait
to roar with mighty billows
and fill Euboea's
hollow bay with corpses,
that Achaeans may learn henceforth
to reverence my temples
and regard... all other deities.
So shall it be,
I will vex the broad Aegean sea,
the beach of Myconus
and the reefs round Delos, Scyros and
Lemnos too and the cliffs of Caphareus
shall be strewn with many a corpse.
Mount thou to Olympus, and taking from
thy father's hand his lightning bolts,
keep careful watch against the hour
when Argos' host lets slip its cables.
A fool is he who sacks the towns
of men with shrines and tombs,
he makes a tomb of himself and dies.
Lift thy head, unhappy lady,
from the ground, thy neck upraise,
this is Troy no more,
no longer am I queen in Ilium.
Though fortune change, endure thy lot,
sail with the stream and steer not
thy barque of life against the tide.
What else but tears...
is now my hapless lot,
whose country, husband,
children, all are lost?
Ah! the high-blown pride of ancestors!
How cabined now, how brought...
to nothing after all.
The anguish I suffer lying here...
upon this hard pallet!
O my head!
Could I but turn over,
to rest my back and spine,
while ceaselessly
my tearful wail ascends.
It is my cheerless dirge of sorrow.
A dirge...
to mourn misfortune...
without a dance.
Oh, that I should...
sit here...
o'er against the tent of Agamemnon.
To slavery...
they hale my aged frame,
forth from my home.
While from my head, in piteous wise,
the hair is shorn for grief.
Ah, wives!
Hapless wives of those
mail-clad sons of Troy!
Poor maidens, luckless brides,
come weep,
for Ilium is now but a ruin!
It is lost in a cloud:
slow, black.
Join...
my moan to thine!
Like some mother-bird that o'er
her fledglings screams, shall I begin!
How different from that song
I sang in days long past.
Hecuba, what means these cries,
thy words?
For I heard thy piteous wail
echo through the building,
and a pang terror shoots through
each captive Trojan's breast,
as they mourn their slavish lot.
- My child,
e'en now the hands of Argive rowers
are busy at their ships.
Is that true? Will they bear me
hence from my country?
Perhaps soon?
- I know not,
though I guess our doom.
Come forth from the tents,
misfortunate Trojan dames!
Here's a greater grief!
The Argives...
are preparing to return.
- No, no, no, no!
Don't call forth now
the wild Cassandra whose voice,
adds to our griefs.
Thou have perished...
Troy.
And they who have died,
ill-fated Troy,
are the same as
the forever ill-fated
who leave thee behind...
alive...
- My queen.
Trembling, I leave the tent
of Agamemnon to learn of thee.
Has my death has been decided or
are the sailors ready to ply their oars?
Keep your soul awake, my girl.
Dread seized on me since dawn.
Hath a Greek herald already come?
To whom am I, poor captive,
given as a slave?
You will soon be allotted.
- In what land,
in what island far from Troy
will I be taken?
Argive or Phthia?
- Where?
In what far clime, will I be a slave,
I, in my old age?
The wretched copy...
of a corpse.
Maybe set to keep the gate...
or tend their children.
I, who in Troy,
once held royal rank!
Your piteous dirge astounds me.
No more through Ida's looms
shall I ply the shuttle to and fro.
I look my last...
and latest on my children's bodies.
The last...
Henceforth I shall endure
surpassing misery.
It may be as the unwilling
bride of some Hellene!
Perish the night and fortune
that brings me to this!
It may be as a wretched slave, I draw
water from Peirene's sacred fount!
Oh, be it ours to come to
Theseus' famous realm!
Never let me see Eurotas' swirling tide,
hateful home of Helen,
there to meet and
be the slave of Menelaus,
whose hand laid Troy waste!
Yon holy land by Peneus fed,
nestling in all its beauty
at Olympus' foot,
is said to be teeming with fruit.
I could wish to reach that land.
If not the sacred soil of Theseus,
I would choose
the land of Aetna,
the mother of Sicilian hills,
famous for the crowns
it gives to athletic worth.
A herald from the host of Danai!
With fresh proclamations,
he comes hasting hither.
What is his errand?
What saith he?
Hecuba,
thou knowest me from my many journeys
as herald 'twixt Greece and Troy,
I Talthybius,
am now sent with a fresh message.
The lot has decided
thy fates already.
Each warrior took his prize in turn.
- To whom hath the lot assigned us?
And what is this happy fortune?
Ask not all thy questions at once.
- Whose prize is my daughter,
hapless Cassandra?
King Agamemnon hath
chosen her out for himself.
To be the slave-girl
of his Spartan wife? - No!
To share with him his stealthy love.
Is it not an honour high
to win our monarch's love?
And my other child
that was taken from me,
what have ye done to her?
- Polyxena? - Yes.
To whom hath the lot assigned her?
To minister at Achilles' tomb
hath been appointed her.
Woe is me!
I the mother of a dead man's slave!
What ordinance is
this amongst Hellenes?
What custom?
Count thy daughter happy.
Thy daughter...
is now well.
What words are these?
Her fate is one that
sets her free from trouble.
And what of mail-clad Hector's wife,
sad Andromache?
Declare her fate.
She too was a chosen prize.
Achilles' son did take her.
As for me...
who chose me?
White with age,
whose servant am I to be?
It was...
Odysseus, king of Ithaca.
Now smite thy close-shorn head.
Tear thy cheeks with thy nails.
I am given to an enemy...
who brings a desert of hate...
where love once reigned.
O weep for me,
a victim to a most unhappy lot!
Thy fate, royal mistress,
now thou knowest.
But what will be mine?
Servants!
Haste and bring Cassandra
forth to me here,
that I may place her
in our captain's hands.
What is the blaze of
torches there within?
Are the Trojan dames
firing the chambers?
Are they setting themselves aflame?
Because they must leave this land?
- No, they set naught ablaze.
It is my child Cassandra,
frenzied maid,
comes rushing wildly hither.
Bring and uplift the light!
Show its flame!
I am the one who illuminates it.
It is I who spread the holy flames.
Behold,
behold the torches burning in my tent!
O lord Hymen,
blest is the bridegroom,
blest am I also,
the maiden soon to wed
a princely lord in Argos!
Thou lament, miserable mother,
calling in thy tears...
for my father's death
and for our country dear.
I, at my own nuptials, am making
this torch to blaze
and show its light,
the wedding flame,
in thy honour, O Hymen!
And thou,
Hecate,
grant thy light.
This is the fire!
This is the nuptial rites for virgins!
Nimbly lift the foot aloft,
lead on the dance,
with cries of joy,
as if to greet
my father's happy fate.
To dance I hold a sacred duty.
Phoebus!
Lead the way.
For 'tis in thy temple mid thy bay-trees,
I come as a sacrifice.
Hymen...
Hymen...
Hymen!
Come, mother and join the dance,
link thy steps with me.
Come, ye maids of Phrygia...
in raiment fair,
sing my marriage with the husband
it is ordained that I should wed!
- My queen,
hold the frantic maiden,
lest with nimble foot she rush
to the Argive army. - My child!
Give me the torch.
Thou canst not bear
its blaze aright in thy fury.
Nor have thy afflictions
left thee in thy sober senses,
but still art thou
as frantic as before.
Put out those torches.
Throw them away.
O mother,
crown my head with victor's wreaths,
rejoice in my royal match,
lead me forth.
If thou find me loth at all,
thrust me there by force!
For if Apollo exists,
Agamemnon,
that famous king of the Achaeans,
will find in me a bride
deadlier than Helen.
For I will slay him.
And lay waste his home.
I!
To avenge my father's
and my bretheren's death!
But of the deed itself,
I will not speak.
Nor will I tell of that axe...
which shall sever
my neck and others,
or a mother's death,
which my marriage shall cause,
nor of the overthrow of Atreus' house.
This our city...
will be happier far
than those Achaeans,
For all my frenzy, it is true!
I will rise above my frantic fit!
Now is the time to speak!
The Athenians...
who for the sake of one woman
have lost a countless
host in seeking Helen.
Their captain too, whom men call wise,
hath lost for what he hated most
what most he prized,
his daughter,
to restore to his brother
a woman who willingly fled.
From the day that they did land upon
Scamander's strand, their doom began,
not for loss of stolen frontier
nor yet for fatherland!
Whomso Ares slew,
those never saw their babes again,
nor were they shrouded
for the tomb by hand of wife,
but in a foreign land they lie.
And in the fatherland far away,
other evils were befalling.
Wives were dying widows,
parents were left childless,
having reared their
sons in their homes,
for others,
and none is left...
to make libations of blood
upon the ground
before their tombs!
The Trojans were dying,
first for their fatherland,
fairest fame to win.
Whomso the sword laid low,
all these found friends
to bear their bodies home,
and laid to rest in their native land,
their funeral rites all
duly paid by duteous hands.
And all who escaped
the warrior's death,
lived ever day by day with wife
and children by them. Joys...
joys the Achaeans had left behind.
As for Hector and his griefs,
hear how stands the case:
his fame remains as
bravest of the brave,
and this was a result
of the Achaeans' coming.
For had they remained at home,
his worth would have gone unnoticed.
Whoso is wise should
fly from making war.
But if he be brought to this pass,
a noble death will crown
his city with glory,
a coward's end with shame.
Wherefore, mother mine, thou shouldst
not pity thy country or my spousal,
for this my marriage will...
destroy those...
whom thou and I most hate.
Had not Apollo turned thy wits astray,
thou shouldst not for nothing
uttered such ominous predictions!
But these reputed wise, are no better
than those that are held as naught!
For that, mighty king of all Hellas,
own son of Atreus, has yielded
to a passion for this mad maiden.
Though I am poor enough, yet would I
ne'er have chosen such a wife as this.
Thou speakest to wind!
Thy senses are not whole!
And may your insults
be scattered to the winds!
Follow me now to the ships.
And thou too follow,
whensoe'er the son of Laertes
demands thy presence,
obey him.
For thou wilt serve
a mistress most discreet,
as all declare who came to Ilium.
Why do they call them heralds?
These hinds to take me from the city?
These charlatans
abhorred by the human race!
Thou sayest my mother shall
come to the halls of Odysseus?
Where then be Apollo's words,
revealed to me...
that she shall die here?
What else remains,
I will not taunt her with.
Little knows he,
the sufferings that await him.
For beyond the ten long years spent
here, he shall drag out another ten,
and then come to
his country all alone.
He has no idea...
of the fell Charybdis lurking in
a narrow channel 'twixt the rocks,
or Cyclops, the savage shepherd,
and Ligurian Circe
that turn men to swine,
shipwrecked oft, fain to eat the lotus,
and the sacred cattle of the sun,
whose flesh shall utter...
a bitter voice to Odysseus.
He shall descend alive to Hades,
and, though he scape
the waters' flood,
yet shall he find
a thousand troubles in his home.
Why am I still recounting...
the troubles of Odysseus?
I,
the handmaid of Apollo,
shall the rocky chasm
with its flood of waters,
my corpse naked,
be cast forth nigh my husband's tomb,
for wild beasts to make
their meal upon!
Ye garlands of that god
most dear to me!
Ye mystic symbols!
Farewell.
I here resign your feasts,
my joy in days gone by.
Go, I tear ye from my body,
and throw them forth here!
Like thus.
While yet mine honour is intact,
I may give them to the rushing winds...
to waft to thee,
my prince of prophecy.
Where is yon general's ship?
I want to get on! Take me now!
Lose no further time in watching for
a favouring breeze to fill thy sails!
And I will come with ye,
but as a Fury.
Fare thee well, mother.
Dry thy tears.
O country dear...
my brothers sleeping in the tomb...
and thou...
my own father true,
and ye shall welcome me.
Yet shall victory crown my advent
amongst the dead,
when I tell ye of
the ruin of the Atreides.
Don't say that thy queen...
is sinking speechless to the ground
without anybody to call for her aid?
Raise her body up!
- Leave me!
Leave me lying where I fell.
My sufferings now, past, and yet
to come, all claim this lowly posture.
Gods of heaven!
Small help I find
in calling such allies.
Born to royal estate...
and wedded to a royal lord,
I was mother to gallant sons.
Children such as
no Trojan or Hellenic or
barbarian mother ever had to boast.
All these have I seen slain
by the spear of Hellas.
And my Priam,
my husband,
with these my eyes I saw him
butchered on his own hearth,
and my city thrown into flames.
The maidens I brought up to see
chosen for some marriage high,
have seen them snatched away,
nevermore can I hope to see them.
To crown my misery,
I shall be brought in my old age...
a slave to Hellas.
And they will impose me on labours...
I won't endure.
Why then raise me up?
What hope is left us?
Guide my steps,
to a bed upon the ground,
nigh some rocky ridge,
that thence I may cast me down.
And perish with weeping.
The first part of The Trojan Women
by Euripides has been broadcast.
Two strikes of the gong will indicate
the start of the second part,
in about two minutes.
Sing me, Muse, a funeral dirge
in strains unheard as yet,
for now will I uplift
for Troy a piteous chant,
telling how I fell a wretched captive by
a four-footed beast that moved on wheels,
when the Greeks left at our gates
a horse, trapped in gold and
filled with warriors,
loud rumbling on its way.
On the rocky citadel the people cried,
"You are now free,
drag this sacred image
to the shrine of virgin Pallas!"
Forth from his house came
every youth and every grey-head too.
And with songs of joy
they took the fatal snare within.
Then they hastened to the gates,
to pull that devious destroyer
of Dardanus' land,
as an offering to the virgin.
Like a ship's hull,
they dragged it with nooses of cord
to the stone fane of the goddess,
and set it on that floor
so soon to drink Trojan blood.
But, as they laboured and made merry,
came on the pitchy night.
Loud the Libyan flute was sounding,
and Phrygian songs awoke,
while maidens beat
the ground with airy foot,
uplifting their gladsome song.
In the halls a blaze of torchlight
shed its flickering shadows
on sleeping eyes.
I was singing as I danced,
to that maiden of the hills,
the child of Zeus,
when lo,
there rang a cry of death
which filled the homes of Troy,
and little babes in terror clung
about their mothers' skirts,
as forth from their ambush came
the band, the handiwork of Pallas.
Anon the altars ran
with Phrygian blood,
and desolation reigned,
a glorious crown for Hellas won,
for her, the nurse of youth,
but for our fatherland a bitter grief.
Hecuba, dost see?
Andromache comes on a foreign car!
And clasped to her,
is her dear Astyanax, Hector's child.
Whither art thou borne?
Side by side with Hector's arms
and Phrygian spoils of war,
with which Achilles' son will carry
far away, a superb gift of his victory.
The Achaeans drag me hence.
Woe is thee!
Dost thou utter the dirge that is mine?
- Ah, me!
For these sorrows?
- O, Zeus!
And for this calamity?
- O, my children!
Our day is past.
- Joy is fled and Troy o'erthrown.
Woe is me!
- Dead too all my gallant sons!
Misery.
Piteous the fate!
Of our city...
smouldering in the smoke.
Come!
My husband, come to me!
- Hapless wife!
My son is in the tomb!
- My defender, come!
Thou, Priam, take me to thy rest!
Bitter are these regrets.
Bitter these woes to bear.
Through the will of angry heaven,
since the day thy son
escaped his doom,
he that for a bride accursed
brought destruction on Troy.
There the gory corpses
of the slain by the shrine of Pallas
lie for vultures to carry off
and Troy is come to slavery's yoke.
O, unhappy land!
- I weep for thee now left behind.
And my house, I weep,
wherein I suffered travail.
What endless streams of tears!
- For Hector, who laid low many Argives!
Dost thou see this grief?
- I only see this:
The gods exalt what
men accounted naught,
and ruin what they most esteemed.
Bitter change.
Hence with my child as booty
am I borne.
The noble are to slavery brought.
This is necessity's grim law.
It was but now Cassandra
was torn from my arms.
There are other ills...
in store for thee.
Thy daughter Polyxena is dead.
Slain at Achilles' tomb,
an offering to his lifeless corpse.
I saw her with mine eyes.
I alighted from the chariot,
and covered her corpse with a mantle.
My daughter...
Yet a happier fate...
compared to me...
who lives.
My child,
death and life are not the same.
The one is annihilation,
the other...
keeps a place for hope.
Mother,
give ear to me,
that I may cheer thy drooping spirit,
thy mother's heart.
I say, ne'er to have been born
and to be dead is all one.
Better far is death
than life with misery!
The dead feel no sorrow.
As if they've never
beheld the light of day.
They know nothing.
They suffer no evils
in the dark, remote from life.
I,
who have known prosperity
and former joy,
have lost everything.
That fair repute,
the only thing a woman
may proudly boast...
never came to be.
I strove to do in Hector's home,
my loving duty...
and all that stamps a woman chaste.
I kept a silent tongue.
And kept a modest eye before my lord.
And well I knew where
I might rule my lord,
and where 'twas best...
to yield to him.
This fame...
has reached the Achaean host,
and proved my ruin.
The son of Achilles, Hector's destroyer,
would take me to make me a slave!
And if I set aside my love for Hector,
I shall appear a traitress to the dead,
while, if I hate him,
I shall incur my master's displeasure.
And yet they say a single night...
removes a woman's
dislike for her husband.
I do hate the woman who,
when she hath lost her former lord,
transfers her love
by marrying another.
O, Hector mine,
in thee I found a husband...
of noble birth,
amply dowered with wisdom and might.
Thou...
didst take me from
my father's house a spotless bride,
thyself the first...
to make this maiden wife.
Thou...
were the first.
Death has claimed thee.
And I to Hellas am soon to sail,
a captive doomed...
to wear the yoke of slavery!
Hope inhabits not my heart.
Hope...
the last resource
of every human heart,
the ultimate refuge of grief.
Nor do I beguile myself...
with dreams of future bliss,
the very thought whereof is sweet.
Thou art in the self-same plight as I.
Thy lamentations for thyself remind me
of my own sad case.
I never yet have
set foot on a ship's deck,
though I have seen
such things in pictures.
Now sailors,
if there come a storm
of moderate force,
are all eagerness...
to save themselves by toil
as the dark tempestuous waves arise.
They yield to fortune...
and commit themselves
to the driving billows.
Even so I,
by reason of my troubles,
am dumb and forbear to say a word.
For Heaven...
is too strong for me.
But thou, my girl,
cease to weep over Hector's fate.
Honour thy present lord,
offering thy sweet nature to win him.
If thou do this,
thou wilt cheer thy friends
as well as thyself,
and thou shalt rear...
my Hector's child...
to lend stout aid to Ilium,
so thy children may build her up again,
and our city yet be stablished!
Hector's wife,
the bravest of the Phrygians!
O hate me not.
For my tongue would fain not tell...
that which the Atreides both command.
Thy prelude bodes evil news.
What is it?
Thy son is...
tis decreed...
How can I tell my news?
To have a different master from me?
Surely not!
He will have no masters.
- Then?
Is it their will to leave him here,
a remnant yet of Phrygia's race?
I know no words to break
the sorrow lightly to thee.
They mean to slay thy son.
So spake Odysseus to the Hellenes,
and his word prevails.
There is no measure
in the woes I bear!
He said they should not rear
so brave a father's son!
And then...
he must be prevented...
from living,
from being brought up.
May such counsels yet prevail
about children of his!
He must be thrown
from Troy's battlements.
Let it be even so and
thou wilt show more wisdom.
Cling not to him,
but bear thy sorrows with courage.
Thou art weak.
For nowhere and from no one
hast thou any help.
Consider this thou must.
Thy husband and thy city are no more,
thou art a prisoner,
and I alone am match enough
for one weak woman.
Wherefore I would not see
thee bent on strife, on resistance.
If thou with composure take thy fate,
thou wilt not leave
his corpse unburied,
and bewail him with
the rite's due piety,
and thyself wilt find more
favour with the Achaeans.
My child,
the last comfort...
of my days.
My own sweet babe,
thy death the foe demands,
and thou must leave
thy wretched mother.
Thou die because
thy father was strong.
His valiancy...
which saved the lives of others,
brings thy death.
Fatal wedding bed!
Woeful wedding rites!
I wasn't brought to the house of
Hector to give a victim to the Greeks...
but a king!
Dost weep?
Dost know thy hapless fate?
Why clutch me,
nestling like a tender chick
beneath my wing?
Hector will not rise again...
and come gripping his famous
spear to bring thee salvation.
No kinsman of thy sire appears,
nor might of Phrygian hosts...
to fight anymore.
One awful headlong leap...
from the dizzy height...
and thou wilt dash out thy life.
Oh, to clasp thy tender limbs,
a mother's fondest joy!
It seems these breasts
did suckle thee...
in vain.
I used to toil and wear myself away!
All for naught.
My sweet one,
kiss...
kiss thy mother,
now...
and for the last time!
Nestle to her,
twine thy arms about my neck,
and join thy lips to mine!
O, ye Hellenes,
cunning to devise
new forms of cruelty,
why slay this child
who never wronged any?
Helen,
evil, hate, envy, death,
and every horror
that teems the earth,
begat thee!
Go on!
Take the babe and bear him hence!
Hurl him down if so ye list,
then feast upon his flesh!
Tis heaven's high will,
and I cannot ward
the deadly stroke from my child.
Hide me and my misery.
Cast me into the ship's hold.
Now that I have lost my child,
of my flesh,
for 'tis to a fair wedding I go!
Child,
come,
leave fond embracing
of thy woeful mother,
and mount thy ancestral towers.
His should the duty be to do such work,
whose heart knows no pity,
who loves ruthlessness more than me.
O child,
an unjust fate robs the life...
from thy mother and me.
What can I do for thee?
For thee...
I smite upon my head and
beat my breast, my only gift.
For that alone is in my power.
Is not our cup full?
What is wanting now...
to our utter and immediate ruin?
The second part of The Trojan Women
by Euripides has been broadcast.
Two strikes of the gong will indicate
the start of the third part,
in about two minutes.
O marvelous day!
Finally!
I now shall take with my own hands...
Helen!
My wife.
For I am he who hath toiled so hard:
Menelaus.
I and Achaea's host.
To Troy I came, not so much
as men suppose to take this woman,
but to punish him who stole my wife,
that traitor.
But he, by heaven's will,
hath paid the penalty,
ruined, and his country too,
by the spear of Hellas.
And I am come to bear...
that Spartan woman hence.
"Wife" I have no mind to call her.
I may slay her,
or carry her back with me to Argos.
The choice was granted to me,
by the very men who toiled
to take her with the spear.
I desire not her death,
here in Troy!
I must carry her to Hellas
and then surrender her to death,
a recompense to all
whose friends were slain in Ilium.
Drag her out!
By her hair with many a murder foul!
O thou that dost support the earth
and rest thereupon,
whosoe'er thou art,
a riddle past our ken.
Be thou Zeus,
or natural necessity,
or man's intellect, to thee I pray,
though thou tread o'er a silent path,
thy dealings with mankind
are by justice guided!
Strange the prayer thou offer up.
I thank thee, Menelaus,
if thou wilt slay that wife of thine!
Yet shun the sight of her,
lest she smite thee with regret.
For she ensnares the eyes of men,
o'erthrows their towns,
and burns their houses.
I and thou dost know her well
and those her victims too.
Menelaus!
This prelude well
may fill me with alarm.
I am haled with violence by thy servants
and brought before these tents.
Still,
though I am well-nigh sure
thou hate me,
yet would I fain inquire what...
thou and Hellas have
decided about my life.
No one had doubted...
that I must kill thee.
And they consigned thee to me
because I am...
the offended.
May I answer this decision,
proving that my death,
if to die I am,
will be unjust?
I came not to argue, but...
to slay thee.
- Hear her, Menelaus.
Let her not die for want of that,
and give me the right...
to answer her again.
For thou knowest naught
of her villainies in Troy.
This boon needs leisure.
Still, the leave is given.
Yet will I grant it
so that she may hear them,
and not for her own sake.
From counting me a foe,
whether my words seem good or ill,
perhaps thou wilt not answer me.
But I can guess
thy silent accusations,
yet will I put
my charges against thine.
Openly.
First, then,
she was the one who
gave birth to Paris!
She was the author of these troubles.
He was to judge
three rival goddesses.
So Pallas offered him command of
all the Phrygians to conquer Hellas.
Hera promised he should spread
his dominion over Asia and Europe,
if he would decide for her.
But Cypris...
spoke in rapture of my beauty
and promised him this boon.
And Cypris won the day.
Through my marriage, Hellas was saved.
Ye are not subject to barbarian rule,
neither vanquished in the strife,
nor yet by tyrants crushed.
Thus what Hellas gained,
was ruin to me,
a victim for my beauty sold,
and now am I reproached for that which
should have set a crown upon my head.
But thou wilt say I am silent
on the real matter at issue,
how it was...
I started forth...
and left thy house by stealth.
My evil genius,
begat by her,
call him Alexander or Paris,
as thou wilt,
came to Sparta
with powerful Cypris at his side!
And thou,
fool,
didst leave him
behind thee in thy house,
and sailed away to Crete.
For all that followed
I must question not thee,
but my own heart.
What frantic thought led me...
to follow the stranger from
my country and my home?
Certainly,
I was misled.
Punish the goddess,
be mightier than Zeus,
who though he lords it o'er all gods,
is yet her slave.
Wherefore I may well be...
pardoned.
Still thou mightest draw
an argument against me,
but specious:
When Paris died
and Earth concealed his corpse,
since my marriage was no
longer in the hands of gods,
I should have left
and sought the Argive fleet.
That was what I fain had done.
The warders on the towers...
and watchmen on
the walls can bear me witness,
for oft they found me seeking
to let myself down stealthily
by cords from the battlements.
How then could thou,
my husband,
put me to death with justice,
seeing that he wedded
me against my will,
and my beauty, instead of leading
on to triumph, has made me...
the bitter slave...
to love.
Royal mistress,
defend thy children's
and thy country's cause,
bringing to naught
her persuasive arguments,
for she pleads well
in spite of all her villainy.
Tis monstrous this!
First will I take up
the cause of those goddesses,
and prove how...
she perverts the truth.
For I can ne'er believe that Hera
or the maiden Pallas would have been
guilty of such folly as to sell her Argos
or Pallas her Athens
to the Phrygians,
coming as they did to Ida...
in mere wanton sport
to contest the palm of beauty.
For why should goddess Hera set
her heart so much on such a prize?
Was it to win a nobler lord than Zeus?
Or was Athena...
bent on finding 'mongst
the gods a husband,
he who in her dislike of marriage
won from her sire the boon
of remaining unwed?
Seek not to impute folly to the goddesses,
in the attempt to gloze o'er thy own sin.
Next thou hast said,
what well may make men jeer,
that Cypris came with my son
to the house of Menelaus.
Could she not have
brought thee to Ilium
and all of the city
of Amyclae to boot,
quietly from heaven?
My son was passing fair,
and when thou sawest him...
thy fancy straight became thy Cypris.
The palace of Menelaus rich was
not enough for thy luxury,
thy life of lust.
Thou maintain that my son...
carried thee off by force!
What Spartan saw this?
Maybe it were the dogs?
What cry didst thou ever raise?
Then when thou wert come to Troy,
and the Argives were on thy track,
and the mortal combat was begun,
whenever tidings came to thee
of Menelaus' prowess, him wouldst
thou praise, to grieve my son,
because he had so powerful...
a rival in his love.
But if so the Trojans prospered,
Menelaus was nothing to thee.
Not on virtue,
but thy eye was fixed on Fortune,
and by such practice wert thou careful
to follow in her steps.
Then thou dost assert
thou didst try to let thyself
down from the towers by stealth with
twisted cords, as if loth to stay?
Pray then, wert thou ever found...
fastening the noose about thy neck,
or whetting the knife,
as...
noble wife would have done...
in regret...
for her former husband?
And full oft I advised thee,
"Get thee gone, daughter, I will help
convey thee to the Achaean fleet.
End the strife 'twixt us and Hellas!"
But this was bitter in thy ears.
For thou wert wantoning...
in Alexander's house,
fain to have obeisance done thee.
Yes, 'twas a proud time for thee.
Nothing else mattered to thee.
And now...
thou come forth,
having bedizened thyself,
and hast dared to appear under
the same sky as thy husband,
Revolting wretch.
Better hadst thou come
in tattered raiment,
cowering humbly in terror,
with hair shorn short,
if for thy past sins.
Menelaus,
crown Hellas by slaying
her as she deserves,
and establish this law
for all others of her sex,
to every traitress to her husband:
death.
Thy thoughts with mine do coincide.
Yes, I am convinced...
that she left my palace,
without constraint,
and sought a stranger's love,
and now Cypris...
is introduced for mere bluster.
Away...
to those who shall
give thee a speedy death.
Oh, by thy knees, I implore thee,
do not slay me!
Take her hence, aboard
wherein she is to sail.
Never let her set foot within
the same ship as thee. - Why?
Is she heavier than of yore?
Who loves once,
must love always.
- Thy wish shall be granted.
It is worthy.
She shall come with me to Argos.
She shall die a shameful death
as a warning to other women...
to be faithful.
No easy task.
O Zeus,
so then thou hast delivered
Ilium into Achaea's hand,
thy fragrant altar,
the sacred fire,
with smoke of myrrh
to heaven uprising.
And holy Pergamos,
and glens of Ida tangled with ivy,
where melting snows
pour down their flood,
a holy sunlit land
that bounds the world
and takes the god's first rays.
Desolate memories!
Gone are thy sacrifices,
gone the dancer's cheerful shout,
and the night vigils!
Thy images of carven gold
are now no more.
Tell me, O king,
tell me if thou care at all
that my city is destroyed!
Thou seated on the sky,
thy heavenly throne, tell me!
Thou saw it destroyed,
a prey to the fiery blast.
Troy...
dead...
O my husband, fondly loved,
thou art a wandering spectre,
unwashed and unburied,
while o'er the sea,
the ship sped by wings
will carry me to Argos,
land of steeds,
where stand Cyclopian stone walls
upreared to heaven.
There the children gather,
and weep their piteous lamentation,
"O mother, woe is me!
Achaeans bear me away
to their dark ship
to row me to sacred Salamis
or to the hill on the Isthmus,
above the two seas,
the key to the gates of Pelops."
Smite the barque of Menelaus,
as it crosses the Aegean main!
O may the blazing thunderbolt,
hurled in might from its holy home,
may a mighty blow
fall in the deck's center,
since it carries to my slavery,
far from Illium, the fatherland,
where the daughter of Zeus
still keeps her golden mirrors,
the delight of maidens' hearts.
Never may he reach his home
in Laconia or his father's hearth,
nor come to Pitane's gates of bronze,
having taken as his
captive a disgraced wife,
the shame of Hellas,
ruin of the Trojans.
New troubles on my country fall,
to take the place
of those that still are fresh.
Behold, ye hapless wives,
the corpse of Astyanax
hurled from the battlements.
Hecuba,
one ship alone delays
and it is soon to sail
freighted with
the spoils of Achilles' son.
Wherefore he is gone,
and with him Andromache.
I wept when she started wailing her country
and crying her farewell to Hector's tomb.
And she craved Neoptolemus
a last grace which was granted:
to bury this poor
dead child of Hector.
And that the shield,
the terror of the Achaeans,
which his father would gird himself,
would not be led
to the home of Peleus,
nor the same bridal bower whither she,
the mother of this corpse,
Andromache,
must take another husband,
a bitter sight to her,
but instead of a coffin of cedar
or a tomb of stone,
will be a sepulchre-shield
for the child.
And that to thy hands,
commit the corpse of Astyanax
that thou mayst deck it
with robes and garlands
as best thou canst
with thy present means.
For she is far away
and her master's haste prevented
her from burying the child herself.
So we,
when thou the corpse hast decked,
will heap the earth above.
Do thou with thy best speed.
I have already bathed the corpse
in the Scamander stream
and cleansed his wounds.
More reason have ye
to boast of your prowess,
than your wisdom, ye Achaeans.
Ye have been guilty...
of a crime never matched before:
Murdering a child out of terror.
Did ye fear that some day...
he would rear again
the fallen walls of Troy?
Hector couldn't do it.
A army of heroes could not
hold back our ruin
and Phrygia was
exterminated in one night.
Fear of a tender babe!
A fear which clouds the reason...
and deplorable.
Set down the shield of Hector there.
My beloved,
thine is a piteous death indeed.
Hadst thou died for thy city,
when thou hadst tasted of...
the sweets of manhood, of marriage,
and of godlike power o'er others,
then...
wert thou blest.
If aught herein is blest.
But thou,
now after one glimpse, one dream,
thou knowest them no more,
and hast no joy of them.
Thou hast died so early.
From thy own father's walls,
from which I saw thy fall,
thy head broken on the ground,
thy curls dispersing,
those which thy mother fondled
and so oft caressed,
now through which fractured bones...
the blood gushes forth.
I will speak no more...
of shocking things.
Cold small hands,
how sweet the likeness
ye retain of his father,
and yet ye lie limp
in thy sockets before me.
When...
nestling in my robe,
didn't thou say true
with thy own voice,
ringing so high,
"Grandmother,
many a lock of my hair
will I cut off for thee,
and to thy tomb will lead
my troops of friends...
to say farewell."
But now 'tis not...
thy hand that buries me,
but I,
on whom...
old age has come...
with no more children,
an old woman,
worn out,
am burying thee,
thy torn body.
Ah me, those kisses numberless,
the nurture that I gave to thee,
those sleepless nights...
they all are lost,
What shall the bard inscribe...
upon thy tomb about thee?
"Out of fear...
the Argives once slew this child."
Foul shame should
that inscription be to Hellas.
Though thou hast no part...
in all thy father's wealth,
yet shalt thou have...
his brazen shield
wherein to find a tomb.
Ah, shield,
that didst keep safe
the comely arm of Hector,
how sweet...
upon thy handle lies his imprint,
and on the rim,
that circles round the targe,
are marks of sweat, his sweat,
that trickled oft from
Hector's brow as he pressed it...
'gainst his beard...
in battle's stress.
We come to you with mourning clothes.
Give it to him.
Dress the little corpse.
Dear shield, victorious parent
of countless triumphs past,
accept thy eternal crown,
thou share the dead child's tomb,
death cannot touch thee.
Wail for the child.
Wail for the child.
Dark death embraces thee.
Dark death embraces thee.
Cry, mother, the dirge of the dead.
Cry, mother, the dirge of the dead.
And cry, mother, thy unending sorrows.
Poor mother!
Who saw the most beautiful
hopes fade away from thee.
And whom we believed happy
because she came from a royal race.
What a tragic death is thine.
Child, it is bitter to leave thee.
Ye captains,
whose allotted task it is
to fire this town of Priam,
launch the flame,
that when we have
destroyed the city
we may set forth from Troy!
And you women,
soon as the host blow loud and
clear upon the trumpet, you leave.
Thou aged foot,
hasten,
that I may say a farewell...
to thy homeland.
Come, let us rush
into the flames, for to die with
my country were a noble death for me...
in its blazing ruin.
Thy sorrows drive thee frantic!
Stop her!
Illium is in flames!
Everything: the tower, the walls,
the rocks collapse!
Like a black wing,
the smoke soars to heaven.
Fire devours each house!
- Earth!
Nurse of thy children!
My children!
Hearken to the voice of thy mother!
I kneel, invoking my hapless husband!
I am being dragged and hurried away.
O the sorrow of that cry!
- Woe is me! O Priam!
Priam, unburied,
naught dost thou know
of my cruel fate!
No, for o'er his eyes
black death hath drawn his pall!
A holy man by sinners slain!
- An immense cloud of dust,
upon the land and in the houses!
The name of my country
will pass into obscurity!
Temples of the gods!
The flames steal them away!
All is scattered far and wide,
and hapless Troy has ceased to be!
Did ye hear that?
Did ye hear that?
The crash of the citadel!
Troy...
is crumbling!
I am overwhelmed by the din!
To the Achaean fleet...
follow the way.
Onwards to our hard days...
of slavery.
Translation by E.P Coleridge,
revised by sineintegral@KG
I'm speaking from
Studio 2 on Via Teulada,
from where we'll broadcast shortly,
Euripides' tragedy of The Trojan Women.
As you can see,
there is no scenery
and if you look at
the interpreters of the work,
you'll see that they don't have
any makeup, wigs or costumes.
I'd like to tell you why.
Why we desire to present
the performance at this juncture.
It is, in other words, a rehearsal
which precedes the dress rehearsal,
which takes place
in the full performance,
with scenery, with costumes,
wigs, makeup, etc.
The reason is this:
In the preparation for a performance,
we go through several phases.
The first which takes place on a table,
where we master
the meaning of the text,
where the actors learn their lines,
after which, we begin
to get the show on its feet,
the actors unite the words
with gestures and action.
It's precisely at this moment,
in which the preparation
of the text reaches its maturation,
that all of us here,
experience a strong emotion
in noting how the words,
the author's thoughts,
in this case, the poet's,
take over.
And they reach that completeness
of expression to which,
according to us,
nothing more can be added.
You will see among the characters...
Andromache,
the wife of Hector
and mother of little Astyanax.
During the performance,
she will have a boy at her side.
But she will imagine him
and you'll have to imagine him too.
The words that she will
address to non-existent children
must become for you, true griefs
as they are related by the poet.
Hecuba, Sarah Ferrati,
is the wife of Priam.
She should be 80 years old with
white hair cut as as sign of mourning.
Well, add yourself the white hair
and imagine the hair cut off.
I mean to say that you are
our collaborator in this performance.
The sea is over there.
The Achaean fleet, after Troy's fall,
waits to put sail to the wind.
Down there, Troy destroyed,
the sea is burning.
All around here,
the camp of the Achaeans,
with the tent of Menelaus,
at the feet of which
Hecuba on the ground,
weeps over the death of her husband
and the destruction of her city.
THE TROJAN WOMEN
From the depths of salt Aegean floods,
where choirs of Nereids trip
in the mazes of the graceful dance,
I,
Poseidon,
God of the sea, come.
Never from my heart hath passed away
a kindly feeling for Troy,
since the day that Phoebus and I
set towers of stone about this land,
which now is smouldering
and overthrown,
a prey to Argive might.
Groves stand forsaken
and temples of the gods
run down with blood,
Priam lies dead,
at the very base of the altar of Zeus,
before the god who watched his home.
The Greeks convey spoils
and gold to the ships,
only waiting a favouring breeze
that after ten long years
filled with terror and destruction,
they may with joy behold
their wives and children.
Scamander's banks re-echo
long and loud the screams
of the captive maids,
as they by lot receive their masters.
Arcadia takes some,
others are assigned to Theseus' sons,
The Trojan dames not portioned out,
are in these tents,
set apart for the leaders of the host.
And with them Spartan Helen,
justly counted among the captives.
And wouldst thou see that queen of misery,
Hecuba, thou canst, for there she lies,
weeping many a bitter tear. Many.
For at Achilles' tomb, her daughter
Polyxena has died most piteously,
likewise are her children dead
and Priam too.
He is no more.
Farewell, O city prosperous once!
Farewell, ye ramparts of hewn stone.
May I address the mighty god
whom Heaven reveres
and who to my own sire
is very nigh in blood,
laying aside our former enmity?
The ties of kin
exerts no feeble spell, Athena.
For thy forgiving mood, my thanks.
Somewhat have I to impart
affecting both thyself and me.
Bring thou fresh tidings
from some god, from Zeus,
or from some lesser power?
No. But on behalf of Troy.
I seek thy mighty aid,
to make it one with mine.
Hast thou laid thy former hate
aside to take compassion on Troy,
now that it is burnt to ashes?
I wish to give my former foes,
the Trojans, joy,
and on the Achaean host impose
a return that they will rue.
Why leap thou thus
from mood to mood?
Thy love and hate both go too far,
on whomsoever centred.
Thou knowest the insult done my shrine?
Surely, in the hour that
Aias tore Cassandra thence.
The Achaeans did naught,
said naught to him. For which cause...
I would join with thee
to work their bane.
My powers are ready at thy will.
What is thy intent?
A returning fraught with woe
will I impose on them.
While yet they stay on shore,
or as they cross the briny deep?
When they have set sail
from Ilium for their homes.
On them will Zeus also send
his rain and fearful hail,
and inky tempests from the sky.
And he promises
to grant me his levin-bolts
to hurl on the Achaeans
and fire their ships!
And do thou, for thy part,
make the Aegean strait
to roar with mighty billows
and fill Euboea's
hollow bay with corpses,
that Achaeans may learn henceforth
to reverence my temples
and regard... all other deities.
So shall it be,
I will vex the broad Aegean sea,
the beach of Myconus
and the reefs round Delos, Scyros and
Lemnos too and the cliffs of Caphareus
shall be strewn with many a corpse.
Mount thou to Olympus, and taking from
thy father's hand his lightning bolts,
keep careful watch against the hour
when Argos' host lets slip its cables.
A fool is he who sacks the towns
of men with shrines and tombs,
he makes a tomb of himself and dies.
Lift thy head, unhappy lady,
from the ground, thy neck upraise,
this is Troy no more,
no longer am I queen in Ilium.
Though fortune change, endure thy lot,
sail with the stream and steer not
thy barque of life against the tide.
What else but tears...
is now my hapless lot,
whose country, husband,
children, all are lost?
Ah! the high-blown pride of ancestors!
How cabined now, how brought...
to nothing after all.
The anguish I suffer lying here...
upon this hard pallet!
O my head!
Could I but turn over,
to rest my back and spine,
while ceaselessly
my tearful wail ascends.
It is my cheerless dirge of sorrow.
A dirge...
to mourn misfortune...
without a dance.
Oh, that I should...
sit here...
o'er against the tent of Agamemnon.
To slavery...
they hale my aged frame,
forth from my home.
While from my head, in piteous wise,
the hair is shorn for grief.
Ah, wives!
Hapless wives of those
mail-clad sons of Troy!
Poor maidens, luckless brides,
come weep,
for Ilium is now but a ruin!
It is lost in a cloud:
slow, black.
Join...
my moan to thine!
Like some mother-bird that o'er
her fledglings screams, shall I begin!
How different from that song
I sang in days long past.
Hecuba, what means these cries,
thy words?
For I heard thy piteous wail
echo through the building,
and a pang terror shoots through
each captive Trojan's breast,
as they mourn their slavish lot.
- My child,
e'en now the hands of Argive rowers
are busy at their ships.
Is that true? Will they bear me
hence from my country?
Perhaps soon?
- I know not,
though I guess our doom.
Come forth from the tents,
misfortunate Trojan dames!
Here's a greater grief!
The Argives...
are preparing to return.
- No, no, no, no!
Don't call forth now
the wild Cassandra whose voice,
adds to our griefs.
Thou have perished...
Troy.
And they who have died,
ill-fated Troy,
are the same as
the forever ill-fated
who leave thee behind...
alive...
- My queen.
Trembling, I leave the tent
of Agamemnon to learn of thee.
Has my death has been decided or
are the sailors ready to ply their oars?
Keep your soul awake, my girl.
Dread seized on me since dawn.
Hath a Greek herald already come?
To whom am I, poor captive,
given as a slave?
You will soon be allotted.
- In what land,
in what island far from Troy
will I be taken?
Argive or Phthia?
- Where?
In what far clime, will I be a slave,
I, in my old age?
The wretched copy...
of a corpse.
Maybe set to keep the gate...
or tend their children.
I, who in Troy,
once held royal rank!
Your piteous dirge astounds me.
No more through Ida's looms
shall I ply the shuttle to and fro.
I look my last...
and latest on my children's bodies.
The last...
Henceforth I shall endure
surpassing misery.
It may be as the unwilling
bride of some Hellene!
Perish the night and fortune
that brings me to this!
It may be as a wretched slave, I draw
water from Peirene's sacred fount!
Oh, be it ours to come to
Theseus' famous realm!
Never let me see Eurotas' swirling tide,
hateful home of Helen,
there to meet and
be the slave of Menelaus,
whose hand laid Troy waste!
Yon holy land by Peneus fed,
nestling in all its beauty
at Olympus' foot,
is said to be teeming with fruit.
I could wish to reach that land.
If not the sacred soil of Theseus,
I would choose
the land of Aetna,
the mother of Sicilian hills,
famous for the crowns
it gives to athletic worth.
A herald from the host of Danai!
With fresh proclamations,
he comes hasting hither.
What is his errand?
What saith he?
Hecuba,
thou knowest me from my many journeys
as herald 'twixt Greece and Troy,
I Talthybius,
am now sent with a fresh message.
The lot has decided
thy fates already.
Each warrior took his prize in turn.
- To whom hath the lot assigned us?
And what is this happy fortune?
Ask not all thy questions at once.
- Whose prize is my daughter,
hapless Cassandra?
King Agamemnon hath
chosen her out for himself.
To be the slave-girl
of his Spartan wife? - No!
To share with him his stealthy love.
Is it not an honour high
to win our monarch's love?
And my other child
that was taken from me,
what have ye done to her?
- Polyxena? - Yes.
To whom hath the lot assigned her?
To minister at Achilles' tomb
hath been appointed her.
Woe is me!
I the mother of a dead man's slave!
What ordinance is
this amongst Hellenes?
What custom?
Count thy daughter happy.
Thy daughter...
is now well.
What words are these?
Her fate is one that
sets her free from trouble.
And what of mail-clad Hector's wife,
sad Andromache?
Declare her fate.
She too was a chosen prize.
Achilles' son did take her.
As for me...
who chose me?
White with age,
whose servant am I to be?
It was...
Odysseus, king of Ithaca.
Now smite thy close-shorn head.
Tear thy cheeks with thy nails.
I am given to an enemy...
who brings a desert of hate...
where love once reigned.
O weep for me,
a victim to a most unhappy lot!
Thy fate, royal mistress,
now thou knowest.
But what will be mine?
Servants!
Haste and bring Cassandra
forth to me here,
that I may place her
in our captain's hands.
What is the blaze of
torches there within?
Are the Trojan dames
firing the chambers?
Are they setting themselves aflame?
Because they must leave this land?
- No, they set naught ablaze.
It is my child Cassandra,
frenzied maid,
comes rushing wildly hither.
Bring and uplift the light!
Show its flame!
I am the one who illuminates it.
It is I who spread the holy flames.
Behold,
behold the torches burning in my tent!
O lord Hymen,
blest is the bridegroom,
blest am I also,
the maiden soon to wed
a princely lord in Argos!
Thou lament, miserable mother,
calling in thy tears...
for my father's death
and for our country dear.
I, at my own nuptials, am making
this torch to blaze
and show its light,
the wedding flame,
in thy honour, O Hymen!
And thou,
Hecate,
grant thy light.
This is the fire!
This is the nuptial rites for virgins!
Nimbly lift the foot aloft,
lead on the dance,
with cries of joy,
as if to greet
my father's happy fate.
To dance I hold a sacred duty.
Phoebus!
Lead the way.
For 'tis in thy temple mid thy bay-trees,
I come as a sacrifice.
Hymen...
Hymen...
Hymen!
Come, mother and join the dance,
link thy steps with me.
Come, ye maids of Phrygia...
in raiment fair,
sing my marriage with the husband
it is ordained that I should wed!
- My queen,
hold the frantic maiden,
lest with nimble foot she rush
to the Argive army. - My child!
Give me the torch.
Thou canst not bear
its blaze aright in thy fury.
Nor have thy afflictions
left thee in thy sober senses,
but still art thou
as frantic as before.
Put out those torches.
Throw them away.
O mother,
crown my head with victor's wreaths,
rejoice in my royal match,
lead me forth.
If thou find me loth at all,
thrust me there by force!
For if Apollo exists,
Agamemnon,
that famous king of the Achaeans,
will find in me a bride
deadlier than Helen.
For I will slay him.
And lay waste his home.
I!
To avenge my father's
and my bretheren's death!
But of the deed itself,
I will not speak.
Nor will I tell of that axe...
which shall sever
my neck and others,
or a mother's death,
which my marriage shall cause,
nor of the overthrow of Atreus' house.
This our city...
will be happier far
than those Achaeans,
For all my frenzy, it is true!
I will rise above my frantic fit!
Now is the time to speak!
The Athenians...
who for the sake of one woman
have lost a countless
host in seeking Helen.
Their captain too, whom men call wise,
hath lost for what he hated most
what most he prized,
his daughter,
to restore to his brother
a woman who willingly fled.
From the day that they did land upon
Scamander's strand, their doom began,
not for loss of stolen frontier
nor yet for fatherland!
Whomso Ares slew,
those never saw their babes again,
nor were they shrouded
for the tomb by hand of wife,
but in a foreign land they lie.
And in the fatherland far away,
other evils were befalling.
Wives were dying widows,
parents were left childless,
having reared their
sons in their homes,
for others,
and none is left...
to make libations of blood
upon the ground
before their tombs!
The Trojans were dying,
first for their fatherland,
fairest fame to win.
Whomso the sword laid low,
all these found friends
to bear their bodies home,
and laid to rest in their native land,
their funeral rites all
duly paid by duteous hands.
And all who escaped
the warrior's death,
lived ever day by day with wife
and children by them. Joys...
joys the Achaeans had left behind.
As for Hector and his griefs,
hear how stands the case:
his fame remains as
bravest of the brave,
and this was a result
of the Achaeans' coming.
For had they remained at home,
his worth would have gone unnoticed.
Whoso is wise should
fly from making war.
But if he be brought to this pass,
a noble death will crown
his city with glory,
a coward's end with shame.
Wherefore, mother mine, thou shouldst
not pity thy country or my spousal,
for this my marriage will...
destroy those...
whom thou and I most hate.
Had not Apollo turned thy wits astray,
thou shouldst not for nothing
uttered such ominous predictions!
But these reputed wise, are no better
than those that are held as naught!
For that, mighty king of all Hellas,
own son of Atreus, has yielded
to a passion for this mad maiden.
Though I am poor enough, yet would I
ne'er have chosen such a wife as this.
Thou speakest to wind!
Thy senses are not whole!
And may your insults
be scattered to the winds!
Follow me now to the ships.
And thou too follow,
whensoe'er the son of Laertes
demands thy presence,
obey him.
For thou wilt serve
a mistress most discreet,
as all declare who came to Ilium.
Why do they call them heralds?
These hinds to take me from the city?
These charlatans
abhorred by the human race!
Thou sayest my mother shall
come to the halls of Odysseus?
Where then be Apollo's words,
revealed to me...
that she shall die here?
What else remains,
I will not taunt her with.
Little knows he,
the sufferings that await him.
For beyond the ten long years spent
here, he shall drag out another ten,
and then come to
his country all alone.
He has no idea...
of the fell Charybdis lurking in
a narrow channel 'twixt the rocks,
or Cyclops, the savage shepherd,
and Ligurian Circe
that turn men to swine,
shipwrecked oft, fain to eat the lotus,
and the sacred cattle of the sun,
whose flesh shall utter...
a bitter voice to Odysseus.
He shall descend alive to Hades,
and, though he scape
the waters' flood,
yet shall he find
a thousand troubles in his home.
Why am I still recounting...
the troubles of Odysseus?
I,
the handmaid of Apollo,
shall the rocky chasm
with its flood of waters,
my corpse naked,
be cast forth nigh my husband's tomb,
for wild beasts to make
their meal upon!
Ye garlands of that god
most dear to me!
Ye mystic symbols!
Farewell.
I here resign your feasts,
my joy in days gone by.
Go, I tear ye from my body,
and throw them forth here!
Like thus.
While yet mine honour is intact,
I may give them to the rushing winds...
to waft to thee,
my prince of prophecy.
Where is yon general's ship?
I want to get on! Take me now!
Lose no further time in watching for
a favouring breeze to fill thy sails!
And I will come with ye,
but as a Fury.
Fare thee well, mother.
Dry thy tears.
O country dear...
my brothers sleeping in the tomb...
and thou...
my own father true,
and ye shall welcome me.
Yet shall victory crown my advent
amongst the dead,
when I tell ye of
the ruin of the Atreides.
Don't say that thy queen...
is sinking speechless to the ground
without anybody to call for her aid?
Raise her body up!
- Leave me!
Leave me lying where I fell.
My sufferings now, past, and yet
to come, all claim this lowly posture.
Gods of heaven!
Small help I find
in calling such allies.
Born to royal estate...
and wedded to a royal lord,
I was mother to gallant sons.
Children such as
no Trojan or Hellenic or
barbarian mother ever had to boast.
All these have I seen slain
by the spear of Hellas.
And my Priam,
my husband,
with these my eyes I saw him
butchered on his own hearth,
and my city thrown into flames.
The maidens I brought up to see
chosen for some marriage high,
have seen them snatched away,
nevermore can I hope to see them.
To crown my misery,
I shall be brought in my old age...
a slave to Hellas.
And they will impose me on labours...
I won't endure.
Why then raise me up?
What hope is left us?
Guide my steps,
to a bed upon the ground,
nigh some rocky ridge,
that thence I may cast me down.
And perish with weeping.
The first part of The Trojan Women
by Euripides has been broadcast.
Two strikes of the gong will indicate
the start of the second part,
in about two minutes.
Sing me, Muse, a funeral dirge
in strains unheard as yet,
for now will I uplift
for Troy a piteous chant,
telling how I fell a wretched captive by
a four-footed beast that moved on wheels,
when the Greeks left at our gates
a horse, trapped in gold and
filled with warriors,
loud rumbling on its way.
On the rocky citadel the people cried,
"You are now free,
drag this sacred image
to the shrine of virgin Pallas!"
Forth from his house came
every youth and every grey-head too.
And with songs of joy
they took the fatal snare within.
Then they hastened to the gates,
to pull that devious destroyer
of Dardanus' land,
as an offering to the virgin.
Like a ship's hull,
they dragged it with nooses of cord
to the stone fane of the goddess,
and set it on that floor
so soon to drink Trojan blood.
But, as they laboured and made merry,
came on the pitchy night.
Loud the Libyan flute was sounding,
and Phrygian songs awoke,
while maidens beat
the ground with airy foot,
uplifting their gladsome song.
In the halls a blaze of torchlight
shed its flickering shadows
on sleeping eyes.
I was singing as I danced,
to that maiden of the hills,
the child of Zeus,
when lo,
there rang a cry of death
which filled the homes of Troy,
and little babes in terror clung
about their mothers' skirts,
as forth from their ambush came
the band, the handiwork of Pallas.
Anon the altars ran
with Phrygian blood,
and desolation reigned,
a glorious crown for Hellas won,
for her, the nurse of youth,
but for our fatherland a bitter grief.
Hecuba, dost see?
Andromache comes on a foreign car!
And clasped to her,
is her dear Astyanax, Hector's child.
Whither art thou borne?
Side by side with Hector's arms
and Phrygian spoils of war,
with which Achilles' son will carry
far away, a superb gift of his victory.
The Achaeans drag me hence.
Woe is thee!
Dost thou utter the dirge that is mine?
- Ah, me!
For these sorrows?
- O, Zeus!
And for this calamity?
- O, my children!
Our day is past.
- Joy is fled and Troy o'erthrown.
Woe is me!
- Dead too all my gallant sons!
Misery.
Piteous the fate!
Of our city...
smouldering in the smoke.
Come!
My husband, come to me!
- Hapless wife!
My son is in the tomb!
- My defender, come!
Thou, Priam, take me to thy rest!
Bitter are these regrets.
Bitter these woes to bear.
Through the will of angry heaven,
since the day thy son
escaped his doom,
he that for a bride accursed
brought destruction on Troy.
There the gory corpses
of the slain by the shrine of Pallas
lie for vultures to carry off
and Troy is come to slavery's yoke.
O, unhappy land!
- I weep for thee now left behind.
And my house, I weep,
wherein I suffered travail.
What endless streams of tears!
- For Hector, who laid low many Argives!
Dost thou see this grief?
- I only see this:
The gods exalt what
men accounted naught,
and ruin what they most esteemed.
Bitter change.
Hence with my child as booty
am I borne.
The noble are to slavery brought.
This is necessity's grim law.
It was but now Cassandra
was torn from my arms.
There are other ills...
in store for thee.
Thy daughter Polyxena is dead.
Slain at Achilles' tomb,
an offering to his lifeless corpse.
I saw her with mine eyes.
I alighted from the chariot,
and covered her corpse with a mantle.
My daughter...
Yet a happier fate...
compared to me...
who lives.
My child,
death and life are not the same.
The one is annihilation,
the other...
keeps a place for hope.
Mother,
give ear to me,
that I may cheer thy drooping spirit,
thy mother's heart.
I say, ne'er to have been born
and to be dead is all one.
Better far is death
than life with misery!
The dead feel no sorrow.
As if they've never
beheld the light of day.
They know nothing.
They suffer no evils
in the dark, remote from life.
I,
who have known prosperity
and former joy,
have lost everything.
That fair repute,
the only thing a woman
may proudly boast...
never came to be.
I strove to do in Hector's home,
my loving duty...
and all that stamps a woman chaste.
I kept a silent tongue.
And kept a modest eye before my lord.
And well I knew where
I might rule my lord,
and where 'twas best...
to yield to him.
This fame...
has reached the Achaean host,
and proved my ruin.
The son of Achilles, Hector's destroyer,
would take me to make me a slave!
And if I set aside my love for Hector,
I shall appear a traitress to the dead,
while, if I hate him,
I shall incur my master's displeasure.
And yet they say a single night...
removes a woman's
dislike for her husband.
I do hate the woman who,
when she hath lost her former lord,
transfers her love
by marrying another.
O, Hector mine,
in thee I found a husband...
of noble birth,
amply dowered with wisdom and might.
Thou...
didst take me from
my father's house a spotless bride,
thyself the first...
to make this maiden wife.
Thou...
were the first.
Death has claimed thee.
And I to Hellas am soon to sail,
a captive doomed...
to wear the yoke of slavery!
Hope inhabits not my heart.
Hope...
the last resource
of every human heart,
the ultimate refuge of grief.
Nor do I beguile myself...
with dreams of future bliss,
the very thought whereof is sweet.
Thou art in the self-same plight as I.
Thy lamentations for thyself remind me
of my own sad case.
I never yet have
set foot on a ship's deck,
though I have seen
such things in pictures.
Now sailors,
if there come a storm
of moderate force,
are all eagerness...
to save themselves by toil
as the dark tempestuous waves arise.
They yield to fortune...
and commit themselves
to the driving billows.
Even so I,
by reason of my troubles,
am dumb and forbear to say a word.
For Heaven...
is too strong for me.
But thou, my girl,
cease to weep over Hector's fate.
Honour thy present lord,
offering thy sweet nature to win him.
If thou do this,
thou wilt cheer thy friends
as well as thyself,
and thou shalt rear...
my Hector's child...
to lend stout aid to Ilium,
so thy children may build her up again,
and our city yet be stablished!
Hector's wife,
the bravest of the Phrygians!
O hate me not.
For my tongue would fain not tell...
that which the Atreides both command.
Thy prelude bodes evil news.
What is it?
Thy son is...
tis decreed...
How can I tell my news?
To have a different master from me?
Surely not!
He will have no masters.
- Then?
Is it their will to leave him here,
a remnant yet of Phrygia's race?
I know no words to break
the sorrow lightly to thee.
They mean to slay thy son.
So spake Odysseus to the Hellenes,
and his word prevails.
There is no measure
in the woes I bear!
He said they should not rear
so brave a father's son!
And then...
he must be prevented...
from living,
from being brought up.
May such counsels yet prevail
about children of his!
He must be thrown
from Troy's battlements.
Let it be even so and
thou wilt show more wisdom.
Cling not to him,
but bear thy sorrows with courage.
Thou art weak.
For nowhere and from no one
hast thou any help.
Consider this thou must.
Thy husband and thy city are no more,
thou art a prisoner,
and I alone am match enough
for one weak woman.
Wherefore I would not see
thee bent on strife, on resistance.
If thou with composure take thy fate,
thou wilt not leave
his corpse unburied,
and bewail him with
the rite's due piety,
and thyself wilt find more
favour with the Achaeans.
My child,
the last comfort...
of my days.
My own sweet babe,
thy death the foe demands,
and thou must leave
thy wretched mother.
Thou die because
thy father was strong.
His valiancy...
which saved the lives of others,
brings thy death.
Fatal wedding bed!
Woeful wedding rites!
I wasn't brought to the house of
Hector to give a victim to the Greeks...
but a king!
Dost weep?
Dost know thy hapless fate?
Why clutch me,
nestling like a tender chick
beneath my wing?
Hector will not rise again...
and come gripping his famous
spear to bring thee salvation.
No kinsman of thy sire appears,
nor might of Phrygian hosts...
to fight anymore.
One awful headlong leap...
from the dizzy height...
and thou wilt dash out thy life.
Oh, to clasp thy tender limbs,
a mother's fondest joy!
It seems these breasts
did suckle thee...
in vain.
I used to toil and wear myself away!
All for naught.
My sweet one,
kiss...
kiss thy mother,
now...
and for the last time!
Nestle to her,
twine thy arms about my neck,
and join thy lips to mine!
O, ye Hellenes,
cunning to devise
new forms of cruelty,
why slay this child
who never wronged any?
Helen,
evil, hate, envy, death,
and every horror
that teems the earth,
begat thee!
Go on!
Take the babe and bear him hence!
Hurl him down if so ye list,
then feast upon his flesh!
Tis heaven's high will,
and I cannot ward
the deadly stroke from my child.
Hide me and my misery.
Cast me into the ship's hold.
Now that I have lost my child,
of my flesh,
for 'tis to a fair wedding I go!
Child,
come,
leave fond embracing
of thy woeful mother,
and mount thy ancestral towers.
His should the duty be to do such work,
whose heart knows no pity,
who loves ruthlessness more than me.
O child,
an unjust fate robs the life...
from thy mother and me.
What can I do for thee?
For thee...
I smite upon my head and
beat my breast, my only gift.
For that alone is in my power.
Is not our cup full?
What is wanting now...
to our utter and immediate ruin?
The second part of The Trojan Women
by Euripides has been broadcast.
Two strikes of the gong will indicate
the start of the third part,
in about two minutes.
O marvelous day!
Finally!
I now shall take with my own hands...
Helen!
My wife.
For I am he who hath toiled so hard:
Menelaus.
I and Achaea's host.
To Troy I came, not so much
as men suppose to take this woman,
but to punish him who stole my wife,
that traitor.
But he, by heaven's will,
hath paid the penalty,
ruined, and his country too,
by the spear of Hellas.
And I am come to bear...
that Spartan woman hence.
"Wife" I have no mind to call her.
I may slay her,
or carry her back with me to Argos.
The choice was granted to me,
by the very men who toiled
to take her with the spear.
I desire not her death,
here in Troy!
I must carry her to Hellas
and then surrender her to death,
a recompense to all
whose friends were slain in Ilium.
Drag her out!
By her hair with many a murder foul!
O thou that dost support the earth
and rest thereupon,
whosoe'er thou art,
a riddle past our ken.
Be thou Zeus,
or natural necessity,
or man's intellect, to thee I pray,
though thou tread o'er a silent path,
thy dealings with mankind
are by justice guided!
Strange the prayer thou offer up.
I thank thee, Menelaus,
if thou wilt slay that wife of thine!
Yet shun the sight of her,
lest she smite thee with regret.
For she ensnares the eyes of men,
o'erthrows their towns,
and burns their houses.
I and thou dost know her well
and those her victims too.
Menelaus!
This prelude well
may fill me with alarm.
I am haled with violence by thy servants
and brought before these tents.
Still,
though I am well-nigh sure
thou hate me,
yet would I fain inquire what...
thou and Hellas have
decided about my life.
No one had doubted...
that I must kill thee.
And they consigned thee to me
because I am...
the offended.
May I answer this decision,
proving that my death,
if to die I am,
will be unjust?
I came not to argue, but...
to slay thee.
- Hear her, Menelaus.
Let her not die for want of that,
and give me the right...
to answer her again.
For thou knowest naught
of her villainies in Troy.
This boon needs leisure.
Still, the leave is given.
Yet will I grant it
so that she may hear them,
and not for her own sake.
From counting me a foe,
whether my words seem good or ill,
perhaps thou wilt not answer me.
But I can guess
thy silent accusations,
yet will I put
my charges against thine.
Openly.
First, then,
she was the one who
gave birth to Paris!
She was the author of these troubles.
He was to judge
three rival goddesses.
So Pallas offered him command of
all the Phrygians to conquer Hellas.
Hera promised he should spread
his dominion over Asia and Europe,
if he would decide for her.
But Cypris...
spoke in rapture of my beauty
and promised him this boon.
And Cypris won the day.
Through my marriage, Hellas was saved.
Ye are not subject to barbarian rule,
neither vanquished in the strife,
nor yet by tyrants crushed.
Thus what Hellas gained,
was ruin to me,
a victim for my beauty sold,
and now am I reproached for that which
should have set a crown upon my head.
But thou wilt say I am silent
on the real matter at issue,
how it was...
I started forth...
and left thy house by stealth.
My evil genius,
begat by her,
call him Alexander or Paris,
as thou wilt,
came to Sparta
with powerful Cypris at his side!
And thou,
fool,
didst leave him
behind thee in thy house,
and sailed away to Crete.
For all that followed
I must question not thee,
but my own heart.
What frantic thought led me...
to follow the stranger from
my country and my home?
Certainly,
I was misled.
Punish the goddess,
be mightier than Zeus,
who though he lords it o'er all gods,
is yet her slave.
Wherefore I may well be...
pardoned.
Still thou mightest draw
an argument against me,
but specious:
When Paris died
and Earth concealed his corpse,
since my marriage was no
longer in the hands of gods,
I should have left
and sought the Argive fleet.
That was what I fain had done.
The warders on the towers...
and watchmen on
the walls can bear me witness,
for oft they found me seeking
to let myself down stealthily
by cords from the battlements.
How then could thou,
my husband,
put me to death with justice,
seeing that he wedded
me against my will,
and my beauty, instead of leading
on to triumph, has made me...
the bitter slave...
to love.
Royal mistress,
defend thy children's
and thy country's cause,
bringing to naught
her persuasive arguments,
for she pleads well
in spite of all her villainy.
Tis monstrous this!
First will I take up
the cause of those goddesses,
and prove how...
she perverts the truth.
For I can ne'er believe that Hera
or the maiden Pallas would have been
guilty of such folly as to sell her Argos
or Pallas her Athens
to the Phrygians,
coming as they did to Ida...
in mere wanton sport
to contest the palm of beauty.
For why should goddess Hera set
her heart so much on such a prize?
Was it to win a nobler lord than Zeus?
Or was Athena...
bent on finding 'mongst
the gods a husband,
he who in her dislike of marriage
won from her sire the boon
of remaining unwed?
Seek not to impute folly to the goddesses,
in the attempt to gloze o'er thy own sin.
Next thou hast said,
what well may make men jeer,
that Cypris came with my son
to the house of Menelaus.
Could she not have
brought thee to Ilium
and all of the city
of Amyclae to boot,
quietly from heaven?
My son was passing fair,
and when thou sawest him...
thy fancy straight became thy Cypris.
The palace of Menelaus rich was
not enough for thy luxury,
thy life of lust.
Thou maintain that my son...
carried thee off by force!
What Spartan saw this?
Maybe it were the dogs?
What cry didst thou ever raise?
Then when thou wert come to Troy,
and the Argives were on thy track,
and the mortal combat was begun,
whenever tidings came to thee
of Menelaus' prowess, him wouldst
thou praise, to grieve my son,
because he had so powerful...
a rival in his love.
But if so the Trojans prospered,
Menelaus was nothing to thee.
Not on virtue,
but thy eye was fixed on Fortune,
and by such practice wert thou careful
to follow in her steps.
Then thou dost assert
thou didst try to let thyself
down from the towers by stealth with
twisted cords, as if loth to stay?
Pray then, wert thou ever found...
fastening the noose about thy neck,
or whetting the knife,
as...
noble wife would have done...
in regret...
for her former husband?
And full oft I advised thee,
"Get thee gone, daughter, I will help
convey thee to the Achaean fleet.
End the strife 'twixt us and Hellas!"
But this was bitter in thy ears.
For thou wert wantoning...
in Alexander's house,
fain to have obeisance done thee.
Yes, 'twas a proud time for thee.
Nothing else mattered to thee.
And now...
thou come forth,
having bedizened thyself,
and hast dared to appear under
the same sky as thy husband,
Revolting wretch.
Better hadst thou come
in tattered raiment,
cowering humbly in terror,
with hair shorn short,
if for thy past sins.
Menelaus,
crown Hellas by slaying
her as she deserves,
and establish this law
for all others of her sex,
to every traitress to her husband:
death.
Thy thoughts with mine do coincide.
Yes, I am convinced...
that she left my palace,
without constraint,
and sought a stranger's love,
and now Cypris...
is introduced for mere bluster.
Away...
to those who shall
give thee a speedy death.
Oh, by thy knees, I implore thee,
do not slay me!
Take her hence, aboard
wherein she is to sail.
Never let her set foot within
the same ship as thee. - Why?
Is she heavier than of yore?
Who loves once,
must love always.
- Thy wish shall be granted.
It is worthy.
She shall come with me to Argos.
She shall die a shameful death
as a warning to other women...
to be faithful.
No easy task.
O Zeus,
so then thou hast delivered
Ilium into Achaea's hand,
thy fragrant altar,
the sacred fire,
with smoke of myrrh
to heaven uprising.
And holy Pergamos,
and glens of Ida tangled with ivy,
where melting snows
pour down their flood,
a holy sunlit land
that bounds the world
and takes the god's first rays.
Desolate memories!
Gone are thy sacrifices,
gone the dancer's cheerful shout,
and the night vigils!
Thy images of carven gold
are now no more.
Tell me, O king,
tell me if thou care at all
that my city is destroyed!
Thou seated on the sky,
thy heavenly throne, tell me!
Thou saw it destroyed,
a prey to the fiery blast.
Troy...
dead...
O my husband, fondly loved,
thou art a wandering spectre,
unwashed and unburied,
while o'er the sea,
the ship sped by wings
will carry me to Argos,
land of steeds,
where stand Cyclopian stone walls
upreared to heaven.
There the children gather,
and weep their piteous lamentation,
"O mother, woe is me!
Achaeans bear me away
to their dark ship
to row me to sacred Salamis
or to the hill on the Isthmus,
above the two seas,
the key to the gates of Pelops."
Smite the barque of Menelaus,
as it crosses the Aegean main!
O may the blazing thunderbolt,
hurled in might from its holy home,
may a mighty blow
fall in the deck's center,
since it carries to my slavery,
far from Illium, the fatherland,
where the daughter of Zeus
still keeps her golden mirrors,
the delight of maidens' hearts.
Never may he reach his home
in Laconia or his father's hearth,
nor come to Pitane's gates of bronze,
having taken as his
captive a disgraced wife,
the shame of Hellas,
ruin of the Trojans.
New troubles on my country fall,
to take the place
of those that still are fresh.
Behold, ye hapless wives,
the corpse of Astyanax
hurled from the battlements.
Hecuba,
one ship alone delays
and it is soon to sail
freighted with
the spoils of Achilles' son.
Wherefore he is gone,
and with him Andromache.
I wept when she started wailing her country
and crying her farewell to Hector's tomb.
And she craved Neoptolemus
a last grace which was granted:
to bury this poor
dead child of Hector.
And that the shield,
the terror of the Achaeans,
which his father would gird himself,
would not be led
to the home of Peleus,
nor the same bridal bower whither she,
the mother of this corpse,
Andromache,
must take another husband,
a bitter sight to her,
but instead of a coffin of cedar
or a tomb of stone,
will be a sepulchre-shield
for the child.
And that to thy hands,
commit the corpse of Astyanax
that thou mayst deck it
with robes and garlands
as best thou canst
with thy present means.
For she is far away
and her master's haste prevented
her from burying the child herself.
So we,
when thou the corpse hast decked,
will heap the earth above.
Do thou with thy best speed.
I have already bathed the corpse
in the Scamander stream
and cleansed his wounds.
More reason have ye
to boast of your prowess,
than your wisdom, ye Achaeans.
Ye have been guilty...
of a crime never matched before:
Murdering a child out of terror.
Did ye fear that some day...
he would rear again
the fallen walls of Troy?
Hector couldn't do it.
A army of heroes could not
hold back our ruin
and Phrygia was
exterminated in one night.
Fear of a tender babe!
A fear which clouds the reason...
and deplorable.
Set down the shield of Hector there.
My beloved,
thine is a piteous death indeed.
Hadst thou died for thy city,
when thou hadst tasted of...
the sweets of manhood, of marriage,
and of godlike power o'er others,
then...
wert thou blest.
If aught herein is blest.
But thou,
now after one glimpse, one dream,
thou knowest them no more,
and hast no joy of them.
Thou hast died so early.
From thy own father's walls,
from which I saw thy fall,
thy head broken on the ground,
thy curls dispersing,
those which thy mother fondled
and so oft caressed,
now through which fractured bones...
the blood gushes forth.
I will speak no more...
of shocking things.
Cold small hands,
how sweet the likeness
ye retain of his father,
and yet ye lie limp
in thy sockets before me.
When...
nestling in my robe,
didn't thou say true
with thy own voice,
ringing so high,
"Grandmother,
many a lock of my hair
will I cut off for thee,
and to thy tomb will lead
my troops of friends...
to say farewell."
But now 'tis not...
thy hand that buries me,
but I,
on whom...
old age has come...
with no more children,
an old woman,
worn out,
am burying thee,
thy torn body.
Ah me, those kisses numberless,
the nurture that I gave to thee,
those sleepless nights...
they all are lost,
What shall the bard inscribe...
upon thy tomb about thee?
"Out of fear...
the Argives once slew this child."
Foul shame should
that inscription be to Hellas.
Though thou hast no part...
in all thy father's wealth,
yet shalt thou have...
his brazen shield
wherein to find a tomb.
Ah, shield,
that didst keep safe
the comely arm of Hector,
how sweet...
upon thy handle lies his imprint,
and on the rim,
that circles round the targe,
are marks of sweat, his sweat,
that trickled oft from
Hector's brow as he pressed it...
'gainst his beard...
in battle's stress.
We come to you with mourning clothes.
Give it to him.
Dress the little corpse.
Dear shield, victorious parent
of countless triumphs past,
accept thy eternal crown,
thou share the dead child's tomb,
death cannot touch thee.
Wail for the child.
Wail for the child.
Dark death embraces thee.
Dark death embraces thee.
Cry, mother, the dirge of the dead.
Cry, mother, the dirge of the dead.
And cry, mother, thy unending sorrows.
Poor mother!
Who saw the most beautiful
hopes fade away from thee.
And whom we believed happy
because she came from a royal race.
What a tragic death is thine.
Child, it is bitter to leave thee.
Ye captains,
whose allotted task it is
to fire this town of Priam,
launch the flame,
that when we have
destroyed the city
we may set forth from Troy!
And you women,
soon as the host blow loud and
clear upon the trumpet, you leave.
Thou aged foot,
hasten,
that I may say a farewell...
to thy homeland.
Come, let us rush
into the flames, for to die with
my country were a noble death for me...
in its blazing ruin.
Thy sorrows drive thee frantic!
Stop her!
Illium is in flames!
Everything: the tower, the walls,
the rocks collapse!
Like a black wing,
the smoke soars to heaven.
Fire devours each house!
- Earth!
Nurse of thy children!
My children!
Hearken to the voice of thy mother!
I kneel, invoking my hapless husband!
I am being dragged and hurried away.
O the sorrow of that cry!
- Woe is me! O Priam!
Priam, unburied,
naught dost thou know
of my cruel fate!
No, for o'er his eyes
black death hath drawn his pall!
A holy man by sinners slain!
- An immense cloud of dust,
upon the land and in the houses!
The name of my country
will pass into obscurity!
Temples of the gods!
The flames steal them away!
All is scattered far and wide,
and hapless Troy has ceased to be!
Did ye hear that?
Did ye hear that?
The crash of the citadel!
Troy...
is crumbling!
I am overwhelmed by the din!
To the Achaean fleet...
follow the way.
Onwards to our hard days...
of slavery.
Translation by E.P Coleridge,
revised by sineintegral@KG