Epeisodion 3
[Episode]
From where, old man, do you say you had this news?
890
Old man
I had started to carry you a letter referring to the former writing.
Clytemnestra
Forbidding or combining to urge my bringing the child to her death?
Old man
No, forbidding it, for your lord was then in his sober senses.
Clytemnestra
How comes it then, if you were really bringing me a letter, that you do not now deliver it into my hands?
Old man
Menelaus snatched it from me, he who caused this trouble.
895
Clytemnestra
Do you hear that, son of Peleus, the Nereid’s child?
Achilles
I have been listening to the tale of your sufferings, and I do not bear my own lightly.
Clytemnestra
They will slay my child; they have tricked her with your marriage.
Achilles
Like you I blame your lord, nor do I view it with mere indifference.
Clytemnestra
No longer will I let shameReading οὐκέτ᾽ αἰδεσθησόμεσθα, a conjecture of Nauck and Hermann’s. Paley regards 11. 900-2 as spurious. prevent my kneeling to you, a mortal to one goddess-born; why do I affect reserve? whose interests should I consult before my child’s? Throwing herself before Achilles. Oh! help me, goddess-born, in my sore distress, and her that was called your bride, in vain, it is true, yet called she was.
900
For you it was I wreathed her head and led her forth as if to marriage, but now it is to slaughter I am bringing her. On you will come reproach because you did not help her; for though not wedded to her, yet were you the loving husband of my hapless girl in name at any rate. By your beard, your right hand, and mother too I do implore you;
905
for your name it was that worked my ruin, and you are bound to stand by that. Except your knees I have no altar to fly to; and not a friend standsReading πέλας with Markland for MSS. γελᾷ, a conjecture adopted by Hermann and Monk. at my side. You have heard the cruel abandoned scheme of Agamemnon; and I, a woman, have come, as you see, to a camp of lawless sailor-folk, bold in evil’s cause,
910
though useful when they wish; Now if you boldly stretch forth your arm in my behalf, our safety is assured; but if not, we are lost.
915
Chorus Leader
A strange thing is motherhood, carrying with it a potent spell, in which all share, so that for their children’s sake they will endure affliction.
Achilles
On the following speech Paley has this remark: there are very grave reasons for doubting whether the genuine speech of Achilles has not been superseded, either wholly or in part, by the verses of a cunning imitator. The reasoning throughout is extremely difficult to follow, if indeed possible, and there are numerous exceptional phrases. Dindorf incloses large portions of this speech in brackets, but it is hard to see why he decides one part to be more suspicious than another.My proud spirit is stirred to range aloft, butI have learned to grieve in misfortune
and rejoice in high prosperity with equal moderation. For these are the men who can count on ordering all their life rightly by wisdom’s rules. True, there are cases where it is pleasant not to be too wise,
920
but there are others, where some store of wisdom helps. Brought up in godly Chiron’s halls myself, I learned to keep a single heart; and provided the Atridae lead well, I will obey them; but when they cease from that, no more will I obey;
925
no, but here and in Troy I will show the freedom of my nature, and, as far as in me lies, do honor to Ares with my spear. You, lady, who have suffered so cruelly from your nearest and dearest, I will, by every effort in a young man’s power, set right, investing you with that amount of pity
930
and never shall your daughter, after being once called my bride, die by her father’s hand; for I will not lend myself to your husband’s subtle tricks; no! for it will be my name that kills your child, although it does not wield the sword. Your own husband
935
is the actual cause, but I shall no longer be guiltless, if, because of me and my marriage, this maiden perishes, she that has suffered past endurance and been the victim of affronts most strangely undeserved.
940
So am I made the poorest wretch in Argos;
I a thing of nothing, and Menelaus counting for a man! No son of Peleus I, but the issue of a vengeful fiend, if my name shallReading φονεύσει with Schäfer. serve your husband for the murder. No! by Nereus, who begot my mother Thetis, in his home amid the flowing waves,
945
never shall king Agamemnon touch your daughter, no! not even to the laying of a finger-tip upon her robe; or SipylusA mountain in Lycia, near which was shown the grave of Tantalus, the ancestor of the Atridae; the town of the same name was swallowed up in very early times by an earthquake., that frontier town of barbarism, the cradle of those chieftains’ line, will be henceforth a city indeed, while Phthia’s name will nowhere find mention.
950
Calchas, the seer, shall rue beginning the sacrifice with his barley-meal and lustral water. Why, what is a seer? A man who with luck tells the truth sometimes, with frequent falsehoods, but when his luck deserts him, collapses then and there.
955
It is not to secure a bride that I have spoken thus—there are maids unnumbered
eager to have my loveReading οὐ for ἧ, and regarding μυρίαι—τοὐμὸν as parenthetical, which in the main is the view taken by Nauck and Klotz of this very nnsatisfactory passage. Paley, regarding it as an interpolation, disdains to emend it.—no! but king Agamemnon has put an insult on me; he should have asked my leave to use my name as a means to catch the child, for it was Ii.e., it was my rank, etc., as described by Agamemnon, that carried the day, and, such being the case, I ought to have had some voice in the matter. (Paley.) chiefly who induced Clytemnestra to betroth her daughter to me;
960
I would had yielded this to Hellas, if that was where our going to Ilium broke down; I would never have refused to further my fellow soldiers’ common interest. But as it is, I am as nothing in the eyes of those chieftains, and little they care of treating me well or ill.
965
My sword shall soon know if any one is to snatch your daughter from me, for then will I make it reek with the bloody stains of slaughter, before it reach Phrygia.Porson, whom Monk follows, corrects this passage thus: ὃν, πρὶν εἰσ᾽ Φρύγας | ἐλθεῖν φόνον, κλῖσιν αἵματος χρανῶ, an ingenious but not absolutely necessary emendation. Calm yourself then; as a god in his might I appeared to you, without being so, but such will I show myself for all that.
970
Chorus Leader
Son of Peleus, your words are alike worthy of you and that sea-born deity, the holy goddess.
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