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We return to Euripides! In today's installment, we get one of those classical narrative tricks of Greek tragedy, which insisted all the events happen in a single day and in a single location: the messenger who shows up to recount in great detail an important event that's just happened off-screen. Since we last saw Orestes heading off to the assembly to argue in his own favor... Well. You can guess about how well that went. But let's see it explained!
Chorus:
O the great wealth and the nobility that thought much of itself throughout Greece and along the Simosian canals, that has long ago drifted out of luck for the Atreidians, from the very very old misfortune of the house, when the golden fleece dispute entered the Tantalids, with most lamentable feasts and the slaughter of noble-born children; since then, murder cutting out murder from blood-kin does not abandon the doubled Atreidians.
The good is not good, to cut the skin of parents with fire-born instruments, and to display a sword black-wrapped by murder in the sun’s light; the well-done wickedness is an intricate impiety and a madness of malicious men; for surrounded by the fear of death, the wretched woman of Tyndareos cried: “Child, it’s not holy by courage, killing your mother; do not, for the sake of avenging your father, attach yourself to eternal infamy.”
What disease or what tears, and what greater pitiable thing throughout the earth, than to set matricidal blood on the hands? Having done this sort of deed, he’s driven wild with madnesses, prey to the Furies, whirling his racing eyes toward murder, the child of Agamemnon. O the wretch, who when he saw his mother’s breast rising up from the gold-woven cloth set up his mother as a sacrificial victim, payment for his father’s misfortunes.
Electra:
Women, has poor Orestes departed to somewhere from this house, overpowered by the god-sent mad rages?
Chorus:
Not in the least! He went to the Argive men, for handling the proposed trial on life, in which you two must live or die.
Electra:
Alas! Why did he do that? And who convinced him?
Chorus:
Pylades. But it seems like in a moment this messenger will tell of the events from that place concerning your brother.
Messenger:*
O miserable, O unfortunate child of General Agamemnon, Lady Electra, listen to the words which I’ve come bearing on misfortunes.
Electra:
Alas, we’re done for; you’re clear in your speech. For it seems likely you’ve come as a messenger of bad news.
Messenger:
By the vote of the Pelasgians it’s decided that your brother die, and you too, miserable woman, on this day.
Electra:
Alas! The prospect has come, fearing which for so long I’ve been melting myself with tears. But what argument, what words among the Pelasgians took us down and sanctioned our death? Speak, old man; must I stop breathing by stoning hand or through iron, having gotten myself a common fate with my brother?
Messenger:
I happened to be walking from the fields through city gates, wanting to learn the matters concerning you and your brother (for I always used to hold goodwill towards your father, and your house used to feed me; I am a poor man, but I act properly towards friends); and I saw a crowd walking in and taking seats at the top, where they say Danaus, giving judgment to Aegyptus, first gathered together men in the common seats. On seeing the gathering I asked someone from the townsfolk: “What’s new for Argus? Surely it’s not some war-enemy setting the city of the Danaids into a tizzy by a message?”
And he said: “Don’t you see that Orestes walking nearby, about to brave the deadly trial?” Then I saw a desperate phantom, which I never wanted to see, Pylades and your brother walking together: the one downcast and dragging with sickness, the other grieving like a brother for his friend, tending to the disease with care.**
And when the gathering of the Argives was full, the herald stood up and said: “Who should speak, on whether or not Orestes the matricide must die?” And at this Talthybius stood up, who helped to destroy the Phrygians with your father. But he said--being always beneath those in power--ambiguous things, on the one hand admiring your father, on the other not praising your brother, winding bad words around good ones, saying that he was establishing unwell customs towards parents; and always he was turning a merry eye towards the friends of Aegisthus. For that breed of man is like that; heralds always leap for the lucky side; and this one’s a friend to those who have power in the city and are among the leaders.
After him, Lord Diomedes gave his argument. He was for killing neither you nor your brother, but to act piously in punishing you with exile. And they all shouted back answers, some saying that he’d spoken well, others that they didn’t approve.
After him, some blabbermouth of a man stood up, bold and brash, an Argive who’s no Argive, self-constrained, and relying on noise and stupid verbosity. [Plausible yet to cast them on something bad; for whenever someone sweet in words but wicked in mind convinces the majority, it’s a great evil to the city; but these sorts of men are always planning your affairs for you, and if they are not present, useful men come back into the city. Thus it is necessary to set a front-line man in sight; for the useful things come to resemble the speaking of the words and the honorable man.] --who said to kill Orestes and you by throwing rocks; but at Tyndareos’ behest he aimed his words, by which he spoke such things for killing.
And someone else stood up and spoke in opposition to that one, not fair in face but a man’s man, who rarely joins the town or the circle in the market, an independent farmer--it’s these men alone who save the land--but intelligent, wanting to get to the point with his words, a pure man, having worked out a blameless life; he said Orestes, child of Agamemnon, should be crowned, who wished to avenge his father by killing a wicked and godless woman who would’ve taken away this: to not take up weapons in hands or go to war, leaving the home, if the men left behind ruin those left in the homes, violating the men’s wives. And he seemed to speak well, to the honest men.
No one else spoke; then your brother stepped up, and he said, “Masters of the land of Inachus, Pelasgians of yore, descendants of Danaus afterwards, I killed my mother defending you no less than my father; for if the murder of men is lawful for women, you’ll come to dying first, or must become slaves to women. You’ll be doing the opposite of what you should do! For now the woman who betrayed my father’s bed has been killed; but if you kill me, the law blows over, and someone will hurry to die, as there’ll be no scarcity of courage.”
But he didn’t persuade the crowd, though he seemed to have spoken well, and a wicked man in the multitude seized the victory, someone who argued to kill you and your brother. Poor Orestes barely convinced them not to kill him by stoning, but to let him take up his life and yours in slaughter by his own hand, on this day. Pylades, crying, is bringing him back from the assembly; and his friends are accompanying him, crying and pitying him; a bitter spectacle and wretched sight is coming to you.
But make ready a sword, or a noose for the neck, since you must leave the light; your noble birth didn’t help you, nor Phoebus sitting on the tripod at Pytho, but he destroyed you.
Chorus Leader:
Oh most wretched maiden, how you were covering your face, as speechless you cast it down towards your earth, how you are about to run to sighing and mourning!
---
* The messenger is of course the ἄγγελος, which we get the word “angel” from. As such, I always end up picturing exciting Seraphim delivering the news in these stories.
** Technically, “tending the disease with attendance”, or “with the office of educating boys”. The dictionary only notes Euripides for having used the sense of “attending to the sick” with this word, so damned if I know what it’s trying to convey. Anyway. Pylades: still watching out for Orestes at this point! Go him, I guess.
[] - This entire section is bracketed off in my text as of dubious origin, and probably not in the original. (I’ve often seen a line or two, or a few words, treated as such, but never such a big chunk.) I’ve translated it anyway on principle, as the editor decided to include it in the text either way. That said, my translation of this bit is atrocious.
Chorus:
O the great wealth and the nobility that thought much of itself throughout Greece and along the Simosian canals, that has long ago drifted out of luck for the Atreidians, from the very very old misfortune of the house, when the golden fleece dispute entered the Tantalids, with most lamentable feasts and the slaughter of noble-born children; since then, murder cutting out murder from blood-kin does not abandon the doubled Atreidians.
The good is not good, to cut the skin of parents with fire-born instruments, and to display a sword black-wrapped by murder in the sun’s light; the well-done wickedness is an intricate impiety and a madness of malicious men; for surrounded by the fear of death, the wretched woman of Tyndareos cried: “Child, it’s not holy by courage, killing your mother; do not, for the sake of avenging your father, attach yourself to eternal infamy.”
What disease or what tears, and what greater pitiable thing throughout the earth, than to set matricidal blood on the hands? Having done this sort of deed, he’s driven wild with madnesses, prey to the Furies, whirling his racing eyes toward murder, the child of Agamemnon. O the wretch, who when he saw his mother’s breast rising up from the gold-woven cloth set up his mother as a sacrificial victim, payment for his father’s misfortunes.
Electra:
Women, has poor Orestes departed to somewhere from this house, overpowered by the god-sent mad rages?
Chorus:
Not in the least! He went to the Argive men, for handling the proposed trial on life, in which you two must live or die.
Electra:
Alas! Why did he do that? And who convinced him?
Chorus:
Pylades. But it seems like in a moment this messenger will tell of the events from that place concerning your brother.
Messenger:*
O miserable, O unfortunate child of General Agamemnon, Lady Electra, listen to the words which I’ve come bearing on misfortunes.
Electra:
Alas, we’re done for; you’re clear in your speech. For it seems likely you’ve come as a messenger of bad news.
Messenger:
By the vote of the Pelasgians it’s decided that your brother die, and you too, miserable woman, on this day.
Electra:
Alas! The prospect has come, fearing which for so long I’ve been melting myself with tears. But what argument, what words among the Pelasgians took us down and sanctioned our death? Speak, old man; must I stop breathing by stoning hand or through iron, having gotten myself a common fate with my brother?
Messenger:
I happened to be walking from the fields through city gates, wanting to learn the matters concerning you and your brother (for I always used to hold goodwill towards your father, and your house used to feed me; I am a poor man, but I act properly towards friends); and I saw a crowd walking in and taking seats at the top, where they say Danaus, giving judgment to Aegyptus, first gathered together men in the common seats. On seeing the gathering I asked someone from the townsfolk: “What’s new for Argus? Surely it’s not some war-enemy setting the city of the Danaids into a tizzy by a message?”
And he said: “Don’t you see that Orestes walking nearby, about to brave the deadly trial?” Then I saw a desperate phantom, which I never wanted to see, Pylades and your brother walking together: the one downcast and dragging with sickness, the other grieving like a brother for his friend, tending to the disease with care.**
And when the gathering of the Argives was full, the herald stood up and said: “Who should speak, on whether or not Orestes the matricide must die?” And at this Talthybius stood up, who helped to destroy the Phrygians with your father. But he said--being always beneath those in power--ambiguous things, on the one hand admiring your father, on the other not praising your brother, winding bad words around good ones, saying that he was establishing unwell customs towards parents; and always he was turning a merry eye towards the friends of Aegisthus. For that breed of man is like that; heralds always leap for the lucky side; and this one’s a friend to those who have power in the city and are among the leaders.
After him, Lord Diomedes gave his argument. He was for killing neither you nor your brother, but to act piously in punishing you with exile. And they all shouted back answers, some saying that he’d spoken well, others that they didn’t approve.
After him, some blabbermouth of a man stood up, bold and brash, an Argive who’s no Argive, self-constrained, and relying on noise and stupid verbosity. [Plausible yet to cast them on something bad; for whenever someone sweet in words but wicked in mind convinces the majority, it’s a great evil to the city; but these sorts of men are always planning your affairs for you, and if they are not present, useful men come back into the city. Thus it is necessary to set a front-line man in sight; for the useful things come to resemble the speaking of the words and the honorable man.] --who said to kill Orestes and you by throwing rocks; but at Tyndareos’ behest he aimed his words, by which he spoke such things for killing.
And someone else stood up and spoke in opposition to that one, not fair in face but a man’s man, who rarely joins the town or the circle in the market, an independent farmer--it’s these men alone who save the land--but intelligent, wanting to get to the point with his words, a pure man, having worked out a blameless life; he said Orestes, child of Agamemnon, should be crowned, who wished to avenge his father by killing a wicked and godless woman who would’ve taken away this: to not take up weapons in hands or go to war, leaving the home, if the men left behind ruin those left in the homes, violating the men’s wives. And he seemed to speak well, to the honest men.
No one else spoke; then your brother stepped up, and he said, “Masters of the land of Inachus, Pelasgians of yore, descendants of Danaus afterwards, I killed my mother defending you no less than my father; for if the murder of men is lawful for women, you’ll come to dying first, or must become slaves to women. You’ll be doing the opposite of what you should do! For now the woman who betrayed my father’s bed has been killed; but if you kill me, the law blows over, and someone will hurry to die, as there’ll be no scarcity of courage.”
But he didn’t persuade the crowd, though he seemed to have spoken well, and a wicked man in the multitude seized the victory, someone who argued to kill you and your brother. Poor Orestes barely convinced them not to kill him by stoning, but to let him take up his life and yours in slaughter by his own hand, on this day. Pylades, crying, is bringing him back from the assembly; and his friends are accompanying him, crying and pitying him; a bitter spectacle and wretched sight is coming to you.
But make ready a sword, or a noose for the neck, since you must leave the light; your noble birth didn’t help you, nor Phoebus sitting on the tripod at Pytho, but he destroyed you.
Chorus Leader:
Oh most wretched maiden, how you were covering your face, as speechless you cast it down towards your earth, how you are about to run to sighing and mourning!
---
* The messenger is of course the ἄγγελος, which we get the word “angel” from. As such, I always end up picturing exciting Seraphim delivering the news in these stories.
** Technically, “tending the disease with attendance”, or “with the office of educating boys”. The dictionary only notes Euripides for having used the sense of “attending to the sick” with this word, so damned if I know what it’s trying to convey. Anyway. Pylades: still watching out for Orestes at this point! Go him, I guess.
[] - This entire section is bracketed off in my text as of dubious origin, and probably not in the original. (I’ve often seen a line or two, or a few words, treated as such, but never such a big chunk.) I’ve translated it anyway on principle, as the editor decided to include it in the text either way. That said, my translation of this bit is atrocious.