To greet my sire—More eagerness, O God, Was there than love!—a feast of brotherhood. And, feigning joyous banquet, laid as meat Before him his dead children. The white feet And finger-fringèd hands apart he set, Veiled from all seeing, and made separate The tables. And he straightway, knowing naught, Took of those bodies, eating that which wrought No health for all his race. And when he knew
The unnatural deed, back from the board he threw, Spewing that murderous gorge, and spurning brake The table, to make strong the curse he spake: “Thus perish all of Pleisthenês begot!”
For that lies this man here; and all the plot Is mine, most righteously. For me, the third, When butchering my two brethren, Atreus spared And cast me with my broken sire that day, A little thing in swaddling clothes, away To exile; where I grew, and at the last Justice hath brought me home! Yea though outcast In a far land, mine arm hath reached this king; My brain, my hate, wrought all the counselling; And all is well. I have seen mine enemy Dead in the snare, and care not if I die!
Leader: Aigisthos, to insult over the dead I like not. All the counsel, thou hast said, Was thine alone; and thine the will that spilled This piteous blood. As justice is fulfilled, Thou shalt not ’scape—so my heart presageth— The day of cursing and the hurlèd death.
Aigisthos: How, thou poor oarsman of the nether row, When the main deck is master? Sayst thou so? … To such old heads the lesson may prove hard, I fear me, when Obedience is the word. But hunger, and bonds, and cold, help men to find Their wits.—They are wondrous healers of the mind! Hast eyes and seest not this?—Against a spike Kick not, for fear it pain thee if thou strike.
Leader: Turning from him to Clytemnestra.
Woman! A soldier fresh from war! To keep Watch o’er his house and shame him in his sleep … To plot this craft against a lord of spears … Clytemnestra, as though in a dream, pays no heed. Aigisthos interupts.
Aigisthos: These be the words, old man, that lead to tears! Thou hast an opposite to Orpheus’ tongue, Who chained all things with his enchanting song, For thy mad noise will put the chains on thee. Enough! Once mastered thou shalt tamer be.
Leader: Thou master? Is old Argos so accurst? Thou plotter afar off, who never durst Raise thine own hand to affront and strike him down …
Aigisthos: To entice him was the wife’s work. I was known By all men here, his old confessed blood-foe. Howbeit, with his possessions I will know How to be King. And who obeys not me Shall be yoked hard, no easy trace-horse he, Corn-flushed. Hunger, and hunger’s prison mate, The clammy murk, shall see his rage abate.
Leader: Thou craven soul! Why not in open strife Slay him? Why lay the blood-sin on his wife, Staining the Gods of Argos, making ill The soil thereof? … But young Orestes still Liveth. Oh, Fate will guide him home again, Avenging, conquering, home to kill these twain!
Aigisthos: ’Fore God, if ’tis your pleasure thus to speak and do, ye soon shall hear! Ho there, my trusty pikes, advance! There cometh business for the spear. A body of Spearmen, from concealment outside, rush in and dominate the stage.
Leader: Ho there, ye Men of Argos! Up! Stand and be ready, sword from sheath!
Aigisthos: By Heaven, I also, sword in hand, am ready, and refuse not death!
Leader: Come, find it! We accept thy word. Thou offerest what we hunger for. Some of the Elders draw swords with the Leader; others have collapsed with weakness. Men from Agamemnon’s retinue have gathered and prepare for battle, when, before they can come to blows, Clytemnestra breaks from her exhausted silence.
Clytemnestra: Nay, peace, O best-belovèd! Peace! And let us work no evil more. Surely the reaping of the past is a full harvest, and not good, And wounds enough are everywhere.—Let us not stain ourselves with blood. Ye reverend Elders, go your ways, to his own dwelling every one, Ere things be wrought for which men suffer.—What we did must needs be done. And if of all these strifes we now may have no more, oh, I will kneel And praise God, bruisèd though we be beneath the Daemon’s heavy heel. This is the word a woman speaks, to hear if any man will deign.
Aigisthos: And who are these to burst in flower of folly thus of tongue and brain, And utter words of empty sound and perilous, tempting Fortune’s frown, And leave wise counsel all forgot, and gird at him who wears the crown?
Leader: To cringe before a caitiff’s crown, it squareth not with Argive ways.
Aigisthos: Sheathing his sword and turning from them.
Bah, I will be a hand of wrath to fall on thee in after days.
Leader: Not so, if God in after days shall guide Orestes home again!
Aigisthos: I know how men in exile feed on dreams … and know such food is vain.
Leader: Go forward and wax fat! Defile the right for this thy little hour!
Aigisthos: I spare thee now. Know well for all this folly thou shalt feel my power.
Leader: Aye, vaunt thy greatness, as a bird beside his mate doth vaunt and swell.