Stasimon 6
[Episode]
(expressing the most abject terror.) I have escaped from death by Argive sword,
Phrygian
in my Asian slippers, by clambering over the cedar-beams that roof the porch and the Doric triglyphs, away, away! O Earth, Earth! in barbaric flight!
1370
Alas! You foreign women, where can I escape, flying through the clear sky or over the sea, which bull-headed Ocean rolls about as he circles the world in his embrace?
1375
Chorus Leader
What is it, Helen’s slave, creature from Ida?
1380
Phrygian
Ilium, Ilium, oh me! city of Phrygia, and Ida’s holy hill with fruitful soil, how I mourn for your destruction a shrill song
with barbarian cry; destroyed through her beauty, born from a bird, swan-feathered, Leda’s cub, hellish Helen! to be a curse to Apollo’s tower of polished stone. Ah! Alas!
1385
woe to Dardania, its wailing, wailing, for the horsemanship of Ganymede, bedfellow of Zeus.
1390
Chorus Leader
Tell us clearly each event within the house. for till now I have been guessing at what I do not clearly understand.
Phrygian
Ah, for Linus! Ah, for Linus! That is what barbarians say, alas, in their eastern tongue as a prelude to death, whenever royal blood is spilled upon the ground by deadly iron blades.
1395
To tell you everything in turn, they came into the house, two twin lions of Hellas; one was called the general’s son; the other was the son of Strophius, a crafty plotter, like Odysseus, treacherous in silence,
1400
but true to his friends, bold for the fight, clever in war and a deadly serpent. Curse him for his quiet plotting, the villain!
1405
In they came to the throne of the wife of Paris the archer,
faces wet with tears, and took their seats in all humility, one on this side, one on that, each with weapons. They threw, they threw their suppliant arms round the knees
1410
of Helen. Her Phrygian servants sprang up frantic, frantic; they called to each other in terror that there was treachery.
1415
To some there seemed no cause, but others thought that the viper who killed his mother was entangling the daughter of Tyndareus in the snare of his plot.
1420
Chorus Leader
And where were you? fled long before in terror?
1425
Phrygian
It happened that I, in Phrygian style, Phrygian, was wafting the breeze, the breeze by the curls of Helen, Helen, with a round feathered fan, before her face,
in barbarian style; and she was twisting flax on her distaff with her fingers, and letting her yarn fall on the floor, for she wanted to sew with her flax purple cloth
1430
as adornment for the tomb from the Trojan spoils, a gift to Clytemnestra.
1435
Orestes said to the Spartan girl: Daughter of Zeus, get up from your chair
and come here to the old hearth of Pelops, our ancestor, to hear something I have to say. He led her, led her, and she followed,
1440
no prophet of the future. But his accomplice, the Phocian villain, was off on other business: Out of my way! Well, Phrygians always were cowards. So he shut them up in different parts of the house, some in the stables, others in the halls,
1445
one here, one there, disposing of them severally at a distance from their mistress.
1450
Chorus Leader
What happened next?
Phrygian
Mother of Ida, great, great mother!
Oh! the murderous scenes and lawless wickedness that I saw, I saw, in the palace! They drew forth swords from hiding under their purple-bordered cloaks, each darting his eye a different way, lest anyone should be near. Like boar of the hills,
1455
they stood opposite the woman and said: You will die, you will die; your cowardly husband is killing you, because he betrayed his brother’s son to death in Argos.
1460
She screamed, oh, oh! she screamed, and brought down her white arm upon her breast and beat her poor head; then turned her golden-sandalled steps in flight, in flight; but Orestes got before her in his Mycenean boots and clutched his fingers in her hair,
1465
and, bending back her neck on to her left shoulder, was on the point of driving the black sword into her throat.
1470
Chorus Leader
Where were you Phrygians in the house to help her?
