Chorus
[1295]
O woman, pitiful exceedingly and exceeding wise, long has been your speech. But if, in truth, you have knowledge of your own death, how can you step with calm courage to the altar like an ox, driven by the god?
Cassandra
There is no escape; no, my friends, there is none any more.1
Chorus
[1300]
Yet he that is last has the advantage in respect of time.
Cassandra
The day has come; flight would profit me but little.
Chorus
Well, be assured, you brave suffering with a courageous spirit.
Cassandra
None who is happy is commended thus.
Chorus
Yet surely to die nobly is a blessing for mortals.
Cassandra
[1305]
Alas for you, my father and for your noble children!She starts back in horror
Chorus
What ails you? What terror turns you back?
Cassandra
Alas, alas!
Chorus
Why do you cry “alas”? Unless perhaps there is some horror in your soul.
Cassandra
This house stinks of blood-dripping slaughter.
Chorus
[1310]
And what of that? It is just the savor of victims at the hearth.
Cassandra
It is like a breath from a charnel-house.
Chorus
You are not speaking of proud Syrian incense for the house.
Cassandra
Nay, I will go to bewail also within the palace my own and Agamemnon's fate. Enough of life!
[1315]
Alas, my friends, not with vain terror do I shrink, as a bird that fears a bush. After I am dead, bear witness for me of this—when for me, a woman, another woman shall be slain, and for an ill-wedded man another man shall fall.
[1320]
I claim this favor from you now that my hour is come.
Chorus
Poor woman, I pity you for your death foretold.
Cassandra
Yet once more I would like to speak, but not a dirge. I pray to the sun, in presence of his latest light, that my enemies2may at the same time pay to my avengers a bloody penalty for
[1325]
slaughtering a slave, an easy prey. Alas for human fortune! When prosperous, a mere shadow can overturn it3; if misfortune strikes, the dash of a wet sponge blots out the drawing.
[1330]
And this last I deem far more pitiable than that.Enters the palace
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1 Auratus read χρόνου πλέων : “more than that of time,” “save for time.”
2 Of this corrupt passage no emendation yet made commends itself irresistibly. The translation is based on the reading ἐχθροὺς φόνευσιν τοὺς ἐμούς, where φόνευσιν is due to Bothe, the rest to J. Pearson.
3 Some editors, altering the passage to σκιᾷ τις ἂν πρέψειεν, “one may liken it to a shadow,” understand “shadow” either literally or as a “sketch.”
Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. 2.Agamemnon. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.
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