Stasimon 2
[Episode]
Finely here! but still I must;Reading καλῶς γ᾽, ἀνασκαίως δὲ·, as Paley edits on his own correction. good come of it for all that!
Agamemnon
Do you know what to do, lady? Then obey me.
725
Clytemnestra
In what matter? for I was ever accustomed to obey you.
Agamemnon
Here, where the bridegroom is, I will—
Clytemnestra
Which of my duties will you perform in the mother’s absence?
Agamemnon
Give your child away with help of Danaids.
Clytemnestra
And where am I to be then?
730
Agamemnon
Go to Argos, and take care of your unwedded daughters.
Clytemnestra
And leave my child? Then who will raise her bridal torch?
Agamemnon
I will provide the proper wedding torch.
Clytemnestra
That is not the custom; but you think lightly of these things.
Agamemnon
It is not good for you to be alone among a soldier-crowd.
735
Clytemnestra
It is good that a mother should give her own child away.
Agamemnon
Yes, and that those maidens at home should not be left alone.
Clytemnestra
They are well guarded in their maiden bowers.
Clytemnestra
No, by the goddess-queen of Argos!
730
Go, manage matters out of doors; but in the house it is my place to decide what is proper for maidens at their wedding.This line is rejected by Monk as spurious; Hermann proposes to read νυμφίοισι παρθένων, and without some such emendation it is diificult to find any meaning in it.
740
Agamemnon
Woe is me! my efforts are baffled; I am disappointed in my hope, anxious as I was to get my wife out of sight; foiled at every point,
I form my plots and subtle schemes against my best-beloved. But I will go, in spite of all, with Calchas the priest, to inquire the goddess’s good pleasure, fraught with ill-luck as it is to me, and with trouble to Hellas.Lines 746-8 are rejected by Monk, whom most editors follow. He who is wise should keep in his house
745
a good and useful wife or none at all.
750
[Choral]
The Hellenes’ gathered army will come in arms aboard their ships to Simois with its silver eddies,
Chorus
to Ilium, the plain of Troy beloved by Phoebus; where Cassandra, I am told, wildly tosses her golden tresses, wreathed with crown of green laurel,
755
whenever the god’s resistless prophecies inspire her.
760
And on the towers of Troy and round her walls shall Trojans stand, when sea-borne troops
with brazen shields row in on shapely ships to the channels of the Simois, eager to take Helen, the sister of that heavenly pair whom Zeus begot, from Priam, and bear her back to Hellas by toil
765
of Achaean shields and spears.
770
The son of Atreus, encircling Pergamus, the Phrygians’ town, with murderous war
around her stone-built towers, dragging Paris’s head backward to cut his throat and sacking the cityThe words πόλισμα Τροίας are omitted by Monk as a gloss on πόλιν. Hartung regards 11. 773-83 as interpolated, and there is certainly much in them that Euripides can scarcely have written; both Dindorf and Kirchhoff reject large portions of what follows 1. 773. from roof to base, shall be a cause of many tears to maids and
775
Priam’s wife. And Helen, the daughter of Zeus, shallἐσεῖται. Hermann gives εἴσεται, shall know to her cost. weep in bitter grief because she left her lord.
780
