Pome of the day: a passage from Aeschylus. I was employed by a charitable organisation, Belfast Housing Aid, during 1988/89. The staff there were remarkably supportive and kind during a time in my life when I was frequently itinerant and once or twice outright homeless. I eventually made the decision to return to Scotland, as my family are here, and as part of my farewell the staff had collection for me: I bought a number of things with the money, including a good pen, but most importantly two books: the Theban plays by Sophocles (Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus) and the Oresteia, by Aeschylus. The Orestieia is the only surviving tragic trilogy from Ancient Greece, and would have been performed over the course of one day, commencing at dawn, along with a missing satyr play that would have provided retrospective light relief from the preceding horror. It would have originally been performed at the festival of Dionysus in Athens. Three dramatists would stage their work, each allotted one day. Afterwards a victor would be decided. The Oresteia won Aeschylus first prize at the festival in 458 BCE. The story so far: Agememnon has returned victorious from the Trojan Wars. He has brought down Troy. As spoils, he brings home Cassandra, daughter of Priam, king of Troy. But Cassandra is no ordinary beauty, she is a priestess to the god Apollo. And in this passage she has a vision of Agamemnon’s death. He is to die at the hands of his wife, outraged that she has waited 10 years for his homecoming from the Siege of Troy, only to see him return with Cassandra as a prize. But even deeper than this outrage, is the thirst for revenge that has eaten away within her all this time, for her murdered daughter Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon had sacrificed at the outset of the fleet’s departure for Ilium. A seer had told Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter to propitiate the Gods, and ensure success in the enterprise. But now he is back home, Clytaemnestra has awaited with a patient fury for ten long years, and in this passage Cassandra sees the coming act of revenge. The gift of prophecy is imposed against Cassandra’s will, it is an act of violation, and it’s hammering insistence galvanises the old men gathered around her to form a Chorus, which acts as amplifier to the prophecy. Free will and individuality are subsumed in the sweep of Fate. The translation is by Robert Fagles.

Cassandra:

Oh no, what horror, what new plot, new agony this?

It’s growing, massing, deep in the house,

A plot, a monstrous…thing

To crush the loved ones, no,

There is no cure and rescue’s far away and…

Leader:

I can’t read these signs; I knew the first,

The city rings with them.

Cassandra:

You, you godforsaken – you’d do this?

The lord of your bed,

You bathe him… his body glistens, then,

How to tell the climax?

Comes so quickly, see,

Hand over hand shoots out, hauling ropes – then lunge!

Leader:

Still lost. Her riddles, her dark words of god –

I’m groping, helpless.

Cassandra:

No no, look there!

What’s that? Some net flung out of hell –

No, she is the snare,

The bedmate, deathmate, murder’s strong right arm!

Let the insatiate discord in the race

Rear up and shriek ‘Avenge the victim – stone them dead!’

Leader:

What fury is this? Why rouse it, lifting its wailing

Through the house? I hear you and lose hope.

Chorus:

Drop by drop at the heart, the gold of life ebbs out.

We are the old soldiers…wounds will come

With the crushing sunset of our lives.

Death is close, and quick.

Cassandra:

I was ashamed to tell this once,

But now…

Leader:

We spoil ourselves with scruples,

Long as things go well.

Cassandra:

He came like a wrestler,

Magnificent, took me down and breathed his fire

Through me and –

Leader:

You bore him a child?

Cassandra:

I yielded,

Then at the climax I recoiled – I deceived Apollo!

Leader:

But the god’s skills – they seized you even then?

Cassandra:

Even then I told my people all the grief to come.

Leader:

And Apollo’s anger never touched you? Is it possible?

Cassandra:

Once I had betrayed him I could never be believed.

Leader:

We believe you, your visions seem so true.

Cassandra:

Aieeeeee!

The pain, the terror! The birth pangs of the seer

Who tells the truth –

it whirls me, oh

The storm comes again, the crashing chords!

Look, you see them nestling at the threshold?

Young, young in the darkness like a dream,

Like children really, yes, and their loved ones

Brought them down…

Their hands, they fill their hands

with their own flesh, they are serving it like food,

Holding out their entrails…now it’s clear,

I can see the armfuls of compassion, see the father

Reach to taste and –

For so much suffering

I tell you, someone plots revenge.

Leader:

Thyestes feast,

The children’s flesh – that I know,

And the fear shudders through me. It’s true,

Real, no dark signs about it. I hear the rest

But it throws me off the scent.

Cassandra:

Agamemnon.

You will see him dead.

Chorus:

But the lust for power never dies –

Men cannot have enough.

No one will lift a hand to send it

from his door, to give it warning,

‘Power, never come again!’

Take this man: the gods in glory

gave him Prism’s city to plunder,

brought him home in splendour like a god.

But now if he must pay for the blood

his father’s shed, and die for the deaths

he brought to pass, and bring more death

to avenge his dying, show us one

who boasts himself born free

of the raging angel…

The reference to Thyestes feast recounts an event at the root of Agamemnon’s ruling house: Thyestes had a brother, Atreus, and both had a claim to the throne. Atreus dealt with the contest by first banishing Thyestes, and then inviting him back to attend a feast. Unwittingly, what Thyestes feasted on was his own children, which from Atreus’ point of view took care of Thyestes lineage. Thyestes cursed Atreus, and the curse travelled down the bloodline, ultimately to the doom of Agamemnon. Apparently, this Greek idea of an hereditary curse destroying a house through the generations was one Coppola used when filming the Godfather and it’s sequels. The ultimate goal of the Oresteia, however, is the extinguishing of the hereditary curse and the cycle of revenge, of blood for blood, that is the mechanism that perpetuates it. Further on in trilogy, in The Libation Bears, Orestes avenges his father by killing Clytaemnestra, his mother. Orestes, in turn, is hunted by the Erinyes, or Furies, who enforce the ancient creed of blood for blood and personify the cycle of revenge. The trilogy ends, however, with their pacification by Athena, and their subsequent integration into more civic modes of justice, characterised by an emphasis on mercy. The Erinyes, literally ‘the angry ones’ are renamed The Eumenides, the kindly ones, the merciful.