The Libation Bearers

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For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. recording by expatriate in bangor maine agamemnon by a translated by edmund doge anderson moore's head eighteen forty nine to nineteen twelve author's prefaces first preface a son of euphorion an athenian of the dem of eleusis was born b c five twenty five he consecrated his life to the tragic art from his youth upwards yet he is held to have been a valiant soldier and with his brother cnagirus to have fought at marathon and at salamis and at plataea as some say afterwards being at variance with the athenians he went away from them unto sicily and dwelt at the court of hiero tyrant of gala and was held by him in high honour he died in his sixty-ninth year by a strange fate whereof he had been warned in an oracle saying a stroke from heaven shall slay thee for as he was walking on the shore an eagle that had snatched up a tortoise into the air let it drop and it fell upon him and he died such is almost all that we are told and more than we can be said to know certainly of the life of the poet whose masterpiece i have done my best to render into english verse with the hope of helping one or two of those to whom the original is a closed book to share in its treasures the remaining fragments of tradition the cause of his quarrel with his countrymen the statement that he divulged the sacred mysteries remain not now to be verified of those given above the tale of his death has been preserved for its striking singularity it has the authority of story and no more to his familiarity with war by land and sea his surviving dramas bear the strongest witness there is a priori likelihood and intrinsic evidence and some external testimony of his having shared in one or more of the great battles which saved the western world nor does his departure from athens to whatever cause it was due nor his residence apparently on two separate occasions in sicily admit of doubt a vague statement that his poetry was inspired by wine a portraiture of him by the pen of aristophanes in the frogs intended as i am convinced those of euripides and socrates by the same hand were intended mainly as a literary portrait of the author and teacher not a delineation of the man as he was some notices from aristotle of the improvements introduced by him into the arrangements of the dramatic stage these and a few others form the whole of our scanty information respecting the life of aeschylus and of euphorion stat magni nominis umbra of his works there remain to us seven dramas only out of a very large number fragments or notices bring up the total to seventy-eight plays of which the titles are known if we can judge of those we have not in any degree by those which we have and many of the fragments lead us towards such an estimate the chaos of lost things holds no equal treasure but it is not now to be rescued in his own words in distois pellithontos perhaps a list of the surviving dramas may be useful to those wishing to form an idea of the poet's scope and range these plays in the chronological order that seems most probable are one the suppliant maidens the scene is laid at argos two the prometheus bound the scene is on a scythian peak looking down from afar upon the euxine three the persians seen the tomb of darius at susa the treasure city of the king of persia for the seven against thebes seen the city of thebes in boeotia five the agamemnon six the libation bearers and seven the furies of these three last plays which form a consecutive whole called a trilogy and yet are individually complete the scene is argos or note argos and mycen are in reality about six miles apart in the great koilon argos wide valley of argolis the relics of the dynasty of atreus are undoubtedly at mycen aeschylus however calls the scene always argos not caring to particularize about a district so well known the fact that he describes the beacon fire on mount arachne as visible to the palace need not lead us to conclude that he had argos more in mind than mycen though the mountain is visible if i remember right from larissa the citadel of argos and not i am sure from the acropolis of mycen the beacon glare would have been clearly seen from either no doubt but aeschylus ignores such detail as mr clark peloponnesus page seventy remarks every athenian saw daily from his own hills the peak of arachne to the south and knew it looked upon the region of argos and this was enough for the poet afterwards the temple of apollo at delphi lastly the acropolis and areopagus at athens of an athenian trilogy that is a combination of three dramas by the same hand whether on the same or different subjects for consecutive presentment on the same day and followed by a lighter play called a satiric drama there remains to us this solitary specimen of the satiric drama the cyclops of euripides familiar to english readers by shelley's translation it may be added to explain the apparent difficulty of listening continuously to three dramas each in itself a perfect whole that in the first place a whole day of leisure and not the last few hours between work or play and sleep of an exhausted audience was devoted to the theatre and secondly that the whole length of the three plays combined which form this trilogy is rather less than that of hamlet i do not say that they would not necessarily take longer to act than hamlet but merely that the intellectual strain to an appreciative audience would not necessarily be greater change of interest not mere rest is the essential relaxation of the mind and this which shakespeare provides for example by the soliloquies of hamlet the greek dramatists and pre-eminently aeschylus provided by the choric odes or chants inserted between the several episodes of the play of such odes this trilogy and especially the agamemnon presents to us the noblest surviving specimens they may be regarded as the poet's profoundest musings on the moral and religious and historical problems suggested by the mythical tale which forms the groundwork of his drama of the grandeur the preternatural effect of these musings while the imminent doom is preparing no words of explanation or translation can give an adequate account if it is lawful to adopt words written for a very different purpose by a poet in whom survives more of the spirit of aeschylus than in any other modern one might say of these choric odes they are as a pause a breathing space a curtain behind which god the great scene shifter prepares the last and supreme act of the mighty drama listen how in the deep shadow behind a dull and heavy sound is waxing listen what footstep is that which passes to and fro look how the curtain sways and waves and trembles before the breath of that which is behind

note

victor hugo napoleon le petit last chapter of the mythical tale well known as it is which forms the groundwork of this trilogy some slight sketch may be useful atreus and thyestes sons of pelops fled from their father and dwelt at argos with eurystheus the king thereof and when he died atreus ruled in his place and wedded his daughter but thyestes wronged his brother's wife and was banished from argos and after a while he returned again and clung unto the altar at argos and atreus fearing to slay him devised this deed he slew certain of the children of thyestes and bade him to a banquet and gave him to eat of his own children's flesh and he ate knowing not what it was but when he knew what was done he spake a bitter curse upon the house of atreus that they should all perish by a doom like that of his own children and there befell these woes unto that house that for three generations the curse of murder departed not away for the children of atreus agamemnon and menelaus wedded the daughters of leda clytemnestra and helen and afterwards paris the son of priam being the guest of menelaus did bear away helen his queen unto troy and agamemnon and menelaus went forth to vengeance against paris and troy but artemis was wroth with the brothers and forbade their ships to sail and they lay at aulis many days then calchas the prophet proclaimed that they should not go forth unless agamemnon should offer up his daughter iphigenia in sacrifice unto artemis and the king was unwilling so to do yet for his oath's sake and for his brother and the captain's of the fleet he consented and offered up his daughter and the fleet sailed and they besieged troy for nine years and in the tenth year it fell but clytemnestra the wife of agamemnon was wroth because of her daughter's death and she did evil with aegisthus the youngest son of thyestes and they plotted to murder agamemnon when he should return and sent away his son orestes unto strophius king of phocis that he might not know what they did and when agamemnon came back from troy clytemnestra received him gladly and led him into the palace and as he was bathing himself she flung over him a net and smote him and he died and clytemnestra and aegisthus ruled in argos but orestes heard of his father's wrongful death and went unto the oracle of delphi to inquire thereof and apollo bade him avenge his father and not spare his own mother but slay her and secretly he came to argos bearing fain news of his own death in phocis and so came into the palace of his father again and slew his mother clytemnestra and aigisthus then was he distraught and maddened by the furies in revenge for clytemnestra's slaying and he wandered over the earth seeking purification for his deed but the furies followed him at last he came to the temple of delphi and clung to the altar and the god cast a deep sleep over the furies and bade him fly to athens where he should find safety but the ghost of clytemnestra arose from the shades and awoke the furies and they followed him and were wroth with apollo and they held dispute on the acropolis and athene bade certain of the men of athens decide the cause with her and in the end they proclaimed the deed of orestes to have been rightly done and the guilt of matricide to have been wiped away then the furies were angered with athena and her land but athena promised them great honour from the athenians and a sacred dwelling-place in the land even a cave beneath areopagus and they were appeased and were called no more furies but gracious goddesses and orestes went back unto his father's kingdom and the curse of blood upon the house of atreus was stayed note i have ventured to give to the whole trilogy the title of the house of atreus as the name most applicable to all three parts the older name oresteia seems to me to have meant in aristophanes the libation-bearers only it is hardly applicable to the agamemnon it will be obvious even from a compendium like the foregoing that the myth is an epic in itself and regarding aeschylus's treatment of it as a whole we may discern a special propriety in the poet's recorded saying that his dramas were scraps from the lordly feast of homer i have sometimes fancied that an interesting parallel might be drawn between the three parts of the trilogy and the three divisions of the divine comedy for we have in both the same central idea the succession i e of guilt atonement absolution dante fixes his epic in the future world aeschylus in the present but mutatis mutandis substituting the deepest religious thought of athens for that of the middle ages the most shadowy and gigantic vision of retributory forces for the clearest and most distinct we shall find the parallel curiously suggestive to say the least of the essential unity of moral speculation the first part of the trilogy the drama agamemnon takes up the above myth at the point where agamemnon's return from troy is being anxiously awaited at argos in the tenth year of the war the first coric ode recalls some of the previous history dwelling particularly on the circumstances of the sacrifice of iphigenia then follows the appearance of the herald and of agamemnon the treacherous welcome of clytemnestra the prophecy of cassandra daughter of priam now a captive in agamemnon's train the murder of the king and clytemnestra's savage exultation over his body and that of cassandra with the appearance of aegisthus and his avowal of his plot and motives the drama closes leaving clytemnestra and her paramour in supreme power over argos The second part, called the kyphoroi, or libation-bearers, from the duty imposed upon the chorus of pouring libations on Agamemnon's tomb, opens with the secret return of Orestes, the mutual recognition of himself and his sister Electra, and their invocation of the sleepless spirit of their father to aid their planned revenge.

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undoubtedly there is a difficulty in applying such a phrase as sum futas ion to the divine life at all but it seems allowable to use words properly only applicable to human life with reference to the divine in a passage like this where in thought the contrast is drawn between the former as an ion sumphutas indeed but not alka sumphutas and the latter verily an ion in the wider sense an alka sumphutas coeval with its eternal power to prompt an aid and certainly the word in its most literal sense seems to suit this idea of a sacred impulse an aid like a wafting wind breathed down from heaven i put forward this conjecture without confidence and merely as one more endeavour to elucidate a passage of more than usual interest which is allowed to be dubious hitherto to make it refer to the life or condition of the speaker seems to me difficult to translate it the time coextensive with the war almost impossible whether my own conjecture is any better you decant for the feeling of the whole passage it might not be amiss to compare goethe's vindication of the honour and toil that await the old in song doch ins bekannte seitanspiel mit mut in anmut einzugreifen nach einem selbstgesteckten ziel mit holdem ehren hinzuschweifen das alte herrn ist eure pflicht with respect to the translation my object has been throughout to be if possible readable i have sacrificed much that scholars might fairly desiderate reproduction of the original metres preservation of strophe and anti strophe and so forth on this ground that i found my own metrical skill insufficient to satisfy even myself in such a task i have little doubt that certain parts cassandra's earlier ravings for instance or the wrath of the furies would be most fitly rendered in prose like that of the analogous passages of king lear and macbeth but here too after a struggle i resign the conflict it is easy to write prose it is impossible to write that prose the anapestic systems have been mostly rendered in octosyllabic metre where dactylic feet were predominant in the original i have sometimes adopted the heroic quatrain sometimes loose and irregular but always rhyming measures the earlier part of the third chorus of the agamemnon i have endeavoured to reproduce in that arrangement of octosyllabic verses used with such admirable effect by mr swinburne in the prologue and epilogue of songs before sunrise the iambic dialogue has been rendered into such blank verse or rhyming couplets as i could command the trochaic passages into rhyming verse of greater length any coincidences that may be found between other translations and the present may claim to be for the most part accidental whatever has been consciously adopted from elsewhere has been acknowledged in a footnote unless so familiar as to have become common property thus i have not thought it necessary to avow obvious obligations to shakespeare nor to ascribe the airy rings of the vulture's flight in the first chorus of the agamemnon to johnson nor the sleep of swords that fine rendering of the homeric chalceas upnos to kingsley nor the rhythm of one choric passage in the libation-bearers to w morris such things are public property now part of this translation i e the agamemnon having been already published i have had for that part the advantage of public criticism i have carefully considered all such criticism so far as it has reached me and have removed i hope all positive errors that have been detected those critics who have complained rather of the general faults of the translation such for example as diffuseness or a modern tone than of particular errors will i hope believe my assurance that their words have been duly weighed if i have not recast the translation to the extent their criticism demanded it is neither from doubting its substantial truth nor the seriousness of the fault but i am not sanguine after various attempts of my being able to translate in a closer and more pregnant style it is not a question of how the thing could be done best in the abstract it is unfortunately the more limited and painful question how a particular individual can do it least imperfectly my main obligations in the matter of aeschylus are expressed in the dedication in addition i am indebted to the rev w a fearon assistant master of winchester for revising a large part of the agamemnon to mr c keegan paul for useful criticisms mainly though not wholly on the same play to mr a o prickard fellow and lecturer of new college oxford for incidental assistance throughout the work particularly in the libation bearers and the furies to mr c b phillips assistant master of winchester who has gone over the whole translation with care to mr d s margoliouth fellow of new college oxford who has helped me especially with several difficulties in the furies other friends will i doubt not accept the general acknowledgment of their aid i cannot however leave unspecified my gratitude to mr f r benson and the rest of the oxford company who last year performed the agamemnon on the stage for the practical insight they afforded their audience into the spectacular as well as the literary and dramatic merit of that noblest of poems e d a m winchester march eighteen eighty one preface to the second edition in republishing the house of atreus i have striven to remove the flaws to which private or public criticism called my attention a grave mistranslation of the furies line to sixteen has i hope been banished mr a o prickard and professor margoliath independently detected and denounced it to me i now plead with orestes miasma decpluton pele kronos caphaire panta giraskon i may be permitted to add a statement of the general principle that i have followed in making alterations errors in scholarship i have endeavoured to remove where the english has been criticised i have always considered and often obeyed the criticism sometimes i have resisted it in obedience to a higher law for example several critics objected to the use of the word spilfe i have retained it as used by shakespeare and therefore fitted for tragic poetry though no longer in ordinary use with regard to the form of the translation i had not made any serious change were i now attempting the thing for the first time i should not throw so much of the first chorus of the agamemnon into quatrains but in this as in other cases that which was originally difficult to do has become almost impossible to undo and do again the previous translation stands like an erring and prohibitory ghost micet eselfis tade phonon ed a m winchester october eighteen ninety nine end of author's prefaces recording by expatriate in bangor Part 1 of Agamemnon by Aeschylus, translated by Edmund Doidge Anderson Moorshead, 1849-1912.

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He consecrated his life to the tragic art from his youth upwards, yet he is held to have been a valiant soldier, and with his brother Kinegiris to have fought at Marathon and at Salamis and at Plataea, as some say.

afterwards being at variance with the athenians he went away from them unto sicily and dwelt at the court of hiero tyrant of gala and was held by him in high honour he died in his sixty-ninth year by a strange fate whereof he had been warned in an oracle saying a stroke from heaven shall slay thee for as he was walking on the shore an eagle that had snatched up a tortoise into the air let it drop and it fell upon him and he died such is almost all that we are told and more than we can be said to know certainly of the life of the poet whose masterpiece i have done my best to render into english verse with the hope of helping one or two of those to whom the original is a closed book to share in its treasures the remaining fragments of tradition the cause of his quarrel with his countrymen the statement that he divulged the sacred mysteries remain not now to be verified of those given above the tale of his death has been preserved for its striking singularity it has the authority of story and no more to his familiarity with war by land and sea his surviving dramas bear the strongest witness there is a priori likelihood and intrinsic evidence and some external testimony of his having shared in one or more of the great battles which saved the western world nor does his departure from athens to whatever cause it was due nor his residence apparently on two separate occasions in sicily admit of doubt a vague statement that his poetry was inspired by wine a portraiture of him by the pen of aristophanes in the frogs intended as i am convinced those of euripides and socrates by the same hand were intended mainly as a literary portrait of the author and teacher not a delineation of the man as he was some notices from aristotle of the improvements introduced by him into the arrangements of the dramatic stage these and a few others form the whole of our scanty information respecting the life of aeschylus and of euphorion stat magni nominis umbra of his works there remain to us seven dramas only out of a very large number fragments or notices bring up the total to seventy-eight plays of which the titles are known if we can judge of those we have not in any degree by those which we have and many of the fragments lead us towards such an estimate the chaos of lost things holds no equal treasure but it is not now to be rescued in his own words in distois pellithontos perhaps a list of the surviving dramas may be useful to those wishing to form an idea of the poet's scope and range these plays in the chronological order that seems most probable are one the suppliant maidens the scene is laid at argos two the prometheus bound the scene is on a scythian peak looking down from afar upon the euxine three the persians seen the tomb of darius at susa the treasure city of the king of persia for the seven against thebes seen the city of thebes and boeotia five the agamemnon six the libation bearers and seven the furies of these three last plays which form a consecutive whole called a trilogy and yet are individually complete the scene is argos or mycenae argos and mycenae are in reality about six miles apart in the great koilon argos wide valley of argolis the relics of the dynasty of atreus are undoubtedly at mycenae aeschylus however calls the scene always argos not caring to particularize about a district so well known the fact that he describes the beacon fire on mount arachne as visible to the palace need not lead us to conclude that he had argos more in mind than mycen though the mountain is visible if i remember right from larissa the citadel of argos and not i am sure from the acropolis of mycen the beacon glare would have been clearly seen from either no doubt but aeschylus ignores such detail as mr clark peloponnesus page seventy remarks every athenian saw daily from his own hills the peak of arachne to the south and knew it looked upon the region of argos and this was enough for the poet afterwards the temple of apollo at delphi lastly the acropolis and areopagus at athens of an athenian trilogy that is a combination of three dramas by the same hand whether on the same or different subjects for consecutive presentment on the same day and followed by a lighter play called a satiric drama there remains to us this solitary specimen of the satiric drama the cyclops of euripides familiar to english readers by shelley's translation it may be added to explain the apparent difficulty of listening continuously to three dramas each in itself a perfect whole that in the first place a whole day of leisure and not the last few hours between work or play and sleep of an exhausted audience was devoted to the theatre and secondly that the whole length of the three plays combined which formed this trilogy is rather less than that of hamlet i do not say that they would not necessarily take longer to act than hamlet but merely that the intellectual strain to an appreciative audience would not necessarily be greater change of interest not mere rest is the essential relaxation of the mind and this which shakespeare provides for example by the soliloquies of hamlet the greek dramatists and pre-eminently aeschylus provided by the choric odes or chants inserted between the several episodes of the play of such odes this trilogy and especially the agamemnon presents to us the noblest surviving specimens they may be regarded as the poet's profoundest musings on the moral and religious and historical problems suggested by the mythical tale which forms the groundwork of his drama of the grandeur the preternatural effect of these musings while the imminent doom is preparing no words of explanation or translation can give an adequate account if it is lawful to adopt words written for a very different purpose by a poet in whom survives more of the spirit of aeschylus than in any other modern one might say of these choric odes they are as a pause a breathing space a curtain behind which god the great scene shifter prepares the last and supreme act of the mighty drama listen how in the deep shadow behind a dull and heavy sound is waxing listen what footstep is that which passes to and fro look how the curtain sways and waves and trembles before the breath of that which is behind note victor hugo napoleon le petit last chapter of the mythical tale well known as it is which forms the groundwork of this trilogy some slight sketch may be useful atreus and thyestes sons of pelops fled from their father and dwelt at argos with eurystheus the king thereof and when he died atreus ruled in his place and wedded his daughter but thyestes wronged his brother's wife and was banished from argos and after a while he returned again and clung unto the altar at argos and atreus fearing to slay him devised this deed he slew certain of the children of thyestes and bade him to a banquet and gave him to eat of his own children's flesh and he ate knowing not what it was but when he knew what was done he spake a bitter curse upon the house of atreus that they should all perish by a doom like that of his own children and there befell these woes unto that house that for three generations the curse of murder departed not away for the children of atreus agamemnon and menelaus wedded the daughters of leda clytemnestra and helen and afterwards paris the son of priam being the guest of menelaus did bear away helen his queen unto troy and agamemnon and menelaus went forth to vengeance against paris and troy but artemis was wroth with the brothers and forbade their ships to sail and they lay at aulis many days then calchas the prophet proclaimed that they should not go forth unless agamemnon should offer up his daughter iphigenia in sacrifice unto artemis and the king was unwilling so to do yet for his oath's sake and for his brother and the captains of the fleet he consented and offered up his daughter and the fleet sailed and they besieged troy for nine years and in the tenth year it fell but clytemnestra the wife of agamemnon was wroth because of her daughter's death and she did evil with aegisthus the youngest son of thyestes and they plotted to murder Agamemnon when he should return, and sent away his son Orestes unto Strophias, king of Phocis, that he might not know what they did.

and when agamemnon came back from troy clytemnestra received him gladly and led him into the palace and as he was bathing himself she flung over him a net and smote him and he died and clytemnestra and aegisthus ruled in argos but orestes heard of his father's wrongful death and went unto the oracle of delphi to inquire thereof and apollo bade him avenge his father and not spare his own mother but slay her and secretly he came to argos bearing fain news of his own death in phocis and so came into the palace of his father again and slew his mother clytemnestra and aigisthus then was he distraught and maddened by the furies in revenge for clytemnestra's slaying and he wandered over the earth seeking purification for his deed but the furies followed him at last he came to the temple of delphi and clung to the altar and the god cast a deep sleep over the furies and bade him fly to athens where he should find safety but the ghost of clytemnestra arose from the shades and awoke the furies and they followed him and were wroth with apollo and they held dispute on the acropolis and athene bade certain of the men of athens decide the cause with her and in the end they proclaimed the deed of orestes to have been rightly done and the guilt of matricide to have been wiped away then the furies were angered with athena and her land but athena promised them great honour from the athenians and a sacred dwelling-place in the land even a cave beneath areopagus and they were appeased and were called no more furies but gracious goddesses and orestes went back unto his father's kingdom and the curse of blood upon the house of atreus was stayed note i have ventured to give to the whole trilogy the title of the house of atreus as the name most applicable to all three parts the older name oresteia seems to me to have meant in aristophanes the libation-bearers only it is hardly applicable to the agamemnon it will be obvious even from a compendium like the foregoing that the myth is an epic in itself and regarding aeschylus's treatment of it as a whole we may discern a special propriety in the poet's recorded saying that his dramas were scraps from the lordly feast of homer i have sometimes fancied that an interesting parallel might be drawn between the three parts of the trilogy and the three divisions of the divine comedy for we have in both the same central idea the succession i e of guilt atonement absolution dante fixes his epic in the future world aeschylus in the present but mutatis mutandis substituting the deepest religious thought of athens for that of the middle ages the most shadowy and gigantic vision of retributory forces for the clearest and most distinct we shall find the parallel curiously suggestive to say the least of the essential unity of moral speculation the first part of the trilogy the drama agamemnon takes up the above myth at the point where agamemnon's return from troy is being anxiously awaited at argos in the tenth year of the war the first coric ode recalls some of the previous history dwelling particularly on the circumstances of the sacrifice of iphigenia then follows the appearance of the herald and of agamemnon the treacherous welcome of clytemnestra the prophecy of cassandra daughter of priam now a captive in agamemnon's train the murder of the king and clytemnestra's savage exultation over his body and that of cassandra with the appearance of aegisthus and his avowal of his plot and motives the drama closes leaving clytemnestra and her paramour in supreme power over argos The second part, called the kyphoroi, or libation-bearers, from the duty imposed upon the chorus of pouring libations on Agamemnon's tomb, opens with the secret return of Orestes, the mutual recognition of himself and his sister Electra, and their invocation of the sleepless spirit of their father to aid their planned revenge.

Then Orestes, assuming the character of a Phocaean stranger, recounts to Clytemnestra a feigned tale of his own death in that land.

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undoubtedly there is a difficulty in applying such a phrase as sum futas ion to the divine life at all but it seems allowable to use words properly only applicable to human life with reference to the divine in a passage like this where in thought the contrast is drawn between the former as an ion sumphutas indeed but not alka sumphutas and the latter verily an ion in the wider sense an alka sumphutas coeval with its eternal power to prompt an aid and certainly the word in its most literal sense seems to suit this idea of a sacred impulse an aid like a wafting wind breathed down from heaven i put forward this conjecture without confidence and merely as one more endeavour to elucidate a passage of more than usual interest which is allowed to be dubious hitherto to make it refer to the life or condition of the speaker seems to me difficult to translate it the time coextensive with the war almost impossible whether my own conjecture is any better you decant for the feeling of the whole passage it might not be amiss to compare goethe's vindication of the honour and toil that await the old in song doch ins bekannte seitanspiel mit mut in anmut einzugreifen nach einem selbstgesteckten ziel mit holdem ehren hinzuschweifen das alte herrn ist eure pflicht with respect to the translation my object has been throughout to be if possible readable i have sacrificed much that scholars might fairly desiderate reproduction of the original metres preservation of strophe and anti strophe and so forth on this ground that i found my own metrical skill insufficient to satisfy even myself in such a task i have little doubt that certain parts cassandra's earlier ravings for instance or the wrath of the furies would be most fitly rendered in prose like that of the analogous passages of king lear and macbeth but here too after a struggle i resign the conflict it is easy to write prose it is impossible to write that prose the anapastic systems have been mostly rendered in octosyllabic metre where dactylic feet were predominant in the original i have sometimes adopted the heroic quatrain sometimes loose and irregular but always rhyming measures the earlier part of the third chorus of the agamemnon i have endeavoured to reproduce in that arrangement of octosyllabic verses used with such admirable effect by mr swinburne in the prologue and epilogue of songs before sunrise the iambic dialogue has been rendered into such blank verse or rhyming couplets as i could command the trochaic passages into rhyming verse of greater length any coincidences that may be found between other translations and the present may claim to be for the most part accidental whatever has been consciously adopted from elsewhere has been acknowledged in a footnote unless so familiar as to have become common property thus i have not thought it necessary to avow obvious obligations to shakespeare nor to ascribe the airy rings of the vulture's flight in the first chorus of the agamemnon to johnson nor the sleep of swords that fine rendering of the homeric calceas upnos to kingsley nor the rhythm of one choric passage in the libation-bearers to w morris such things are public property now part of this translation i e the agamemnon having been already published i have had for that part the advantage of public criticism i have carefully considered all such criticism so far as it has reached me and have removed i hope all positive errors that have been detected those critics who have complained rather of the general faults of the translation such for example as diffuseness or a modern tone than of particular errors will i hope believe my assurance that their words have been duly weighed if i have not recast the translation to the extent their criticism demanded it is neither from doubting its substantial truth nor the seriousness of the fault but i am not sanguine after various attempts of my being able to translate in a closer and more pregnant style it is not a question of how the thing could be done best in the abstract it is unfortunately the more limited and painful question how a particular individual can do it least imperfectly my main obligations in the matter of aeschylus are expressed in the dedication in addition i am indebted to the rev w a fearon assistant master of winchester for revising a large part of the agamemnon to mr c keegan paul for useful criticisms mainly though not wholly on the same play to mr a o prickard fellow and lecturer of new college oxford for incidental assistance throughout the work particularly in the libation bearers and the furies to mr c b phillips assistant master of winchester who has gone over the whole translation with care to mr d s margoliouth fellow of new college oxford who has helped me especially with several difficulties in the furies other friends will i doubt not accept the general acknowledgment of their aid i cannot however leave unspecified my gratitude to mr f r benson and the rest of the oxford company who last year performed the agamemnon on the stage for the practical insight they afforded their audience into the spectacular as well as the literary and dramatic merit of that noblest of poems e d a m winchester march eighteen eighty one preface to the second edition in republishing the house of atreus i have striven to remove the flaws to which private or public criticism called my attention a grave mistranslation of the furies line to sixteen has i hope been banished mr a o prickard and professor margoliot independently detected and denounced it to me i now plead with orestes miasma decpluton pele kronos caphaire panta giraskon i may be permitted to add a statement of the general principle that i have followed in making alterations errors in scholarship i have endeavoured to remove where the english has been criticised i have always considered and often obeyed the criticism sometimes i have resisted it in obedience to a higher law for example several critics objected to the use of the word spilfe i have retained it as used by shakespeare and therefore fitted for tragic poetry though no longer in ordinary use with regard to the form of the translation i had not made any serious change were i now attempting the thing for the first time i should not throw so much of the first chorus of the agamemnon into quatrains but in this as in other cases that which was originally difficult to do has become almost impossible to undo and do again the previous translation stands like an erring and prohibitory ghost micet eselfis tade phonon ed a m winchester october eighteen ninety nine end of author's prefaces recording by expatriate in bangor Part 1 of Agamemnon by Aeschylus, translated by Edmund Doidge Anderson Moorshead, 1849-1912.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

If the sinner escapes, the curse hangs over his house, but the guiltless do not suffer.

the curse slumbers until a fresh misdeed calls down the wrath of heaven prometheus is punished for a time but is at last liberated and glorified in ascyllus fourth play the seven against thebes eteocles is king and is threatened by an invasion under polynices his exiled brother both are under their father's curse yet ascyllus makes us feel that eteocles by prudence can save his city and himself it is because in impious rage against his brother he rushes to fight him hand to hand that he falls and brings final ruin on his house The crowning work of Aeschylus is the trilogy Agamemnon, Coeferi, Libation-bearers, and Eumenides.

Agamemnon, returning victorious from Troy, is murdered by his queen, Clytemnestra.

For a time she reigned with her paramour, Aegisthus.

hushed and stilled shall blow the wind of doom

all exit End of the Libation Bearers The Oristea by Aeschylus.

Translated by E. D.

A. Mooreshead.

trilogy.

It's followed by the Libation Bearers and the Eumenides or the Kindly Ones.

So the trilogy is called the Oresteia.

Why is it called that? Because it's about the rise of Orestes.

So it's the first part of a trilogy.

Do we see her popping up in parts two and three then? Well, we certainly see her pop up in part two.

In The Libation Bearers, we see Orestes return.

So he finally turns up in his trilogy.

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The House of Atreus, being the Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Furies of Aeschylus.

Dramatis personae in order of speaking.

Watchman read by Joseph Early.

A. Morshead.

Section 3.

The Libation Bearers.

Part 1.

first was thaisdy's loathly woe the rueful feast of long ago on children's flesh unknown and next the kingly chief's despite when he who led the greeks to fight was in the bath hewn down and now the offspring of the race stands in the third the saviour's place to save or to consume o whither ere it be fulfilled ere its fierce blasts be hushed and stilled shall blow the wind of doom

all exit End of the Libation Bearers The Oristea by Aeschylus.

Translated by E. D.

A. Mooreshead.

In the Achelean theatre, the chorus is generally the central figure in the dramatic action.

Such titles as the Daughters of the Sun, the Nurses of Dionysus, and the Daughters of Mirias, and the women suggest at any rate romantic plays with a strong feminist interest such others as the women of the bedchamber the water-carriers and the women of edna might well be examples of that realistic treatment of women's life of which we have an example in the nurse of the libation bearers arguments drawn merely from the names of lost plays are obviously of little value except in so far as they strengthen the definite evidence which the existing tragedies supply but an examination of the remaining seven plays will show that the first and greatest of Athenian dramatists was deeply impressed with the potentialities for good and evil of the female mind.

End of chapter number five

CHAPTER VI.

Is it right for a son to kill his mother in order to avenge his father's death? But the trilogy of the Oresteia, besides being concerned with feminist problems, is a living gallery of woman types.

Clytemnestra and Cassandra, Electra and the Nurse, the Chorus of Maidens in the Corifuri, and the Chorus of Women Furies in the Eumenides.

in the agamemnon the two women are sharply contrasted clytemnestra the queen who will not submit to man's rule cassandra the victim predestined by fate to suffer the caprices of a master and to pass from the treacherous lover apollo to the brutal owner agamemnon no one can read the play and feel much sympathy with the murdered king he is done to death with every circumstance of horror returning home after many years absence in a foreign land where he has been fighting for his country he finds within his house not a faithful wife but a secret enemy she conceals her hatred allures him to the bath and there with her own hands murders him and yet the dramatist and his readers find the wife rather than the husband the sympathetic character it is partly the intolerable callousness and brutal pride of agamemnon who has sacrificed his daughter's life to help on his political schemes and now brings home with him from troy the concubine whom he has compelled to share his bed but there is also the feeling that clytemnestra is really the better man of the pair that she is naturally born to rule and that her subjection to a man would be against the law of nature certainly in the play she takes the first place and cassandra a part vocally the most important of any comes next the men agamemnon the watchman the herald aegisthus and the helpless chorus of aged counsellors are merely foils to the manlike queen the contrast indeed between the resolute woman and the irresolute men in the closing scenes is almost comic and the play ends with her triumph in the sequel the libation bearers the main action is again in the hands of women electra and her friends the maidens of the chorus orestes it is true does the actual killing but there is this difference between brother and sister electra acts on her own initiative and is a woman as strong-willed as clytemnestra herself orestes acts only in obedience to the promptings of others Electra feels no remorse.

Orestes, as soon as he has killed his mother, is tormented by imaginary terrors.

Scene, the city of Thebes in Boeotia.

five the Agamemnon, six the Libation Bearers, and seven the Furies.

Of these three last plays, which form a consecutive whole called a trilogy, and yet are individually complete, the scene is Argos or Mycenae.

Note, Argos and Mycenae are in reality about six miles apart.

And Orestes went back unto his father's kingdom, and the curse of blood upon the house of Atreus was stayed.

Note, I have ventured to give to the whole trilogy the title of the House of Atreus, as the name most applicable to all three parts.

The older name Oresteia seems to me to have meant, in Aristophanes, the libation bearers only.

It is hardly applicable to the Agamemnon.