And though his race was blest before, 'Twill bud with sorrows weeping sore, And never ending once begun.

But I think not, as think the crowd:

The impious doer still begets
A brook of impious doers more,

Children and heirs of all his wicked deeds: Whilst from the house of righteous men, Who even-handed justice love,

Comes a long line of children good and fair.
Foul Villany, that wanton'd in its day,

Now its old crimes by time are half effaced,
Still reproduces others fresh and young,
In generations new of wicked men;
And brings its horrid progeny to light.

Agamemnon now returns, borne in a sort of triumphal procession; and seated in another car, laden with booty, follows Cassandra, his prisoner of war, and mistress, according to the privilege of the heroes of those days. Clytemnestra greets him with hypocritical joy and veneration; she orders her slaves to cover the ground with the most costly embroideries of purple, that it might not be touched by the foot of the conqueror. Agamemnon, with wise moderation, at first refuses to receive an honour due only to the Gods; at last he yields to her invitations, and enters the house. The Chorus then begin to utter dark forebodings. Clytemnestra returns to allure Cassandra to her destruction by the art of soft persuasion. The latter remains dumb and motionless; but the queen is hardly gone, when, seized with a prophectic rage, she breaks out into the most perplexing lamentations, and afterwards unveils her prophecies more distinctly to the Chorus:-she sees in her mind all the enormities which have been perpetrated in that house: the repast of Thyestes, which the sun refused to look on; the shadows of the dilacerated children gazing down on her from the battlements of the palace. She sees also, the death prepared both for Agamemnon and herself-and then, as if seized with overpowering fury, rushes maniaclike, into the house to meet her doom.

CLYTEMNESTRA, CASSANDRA, CHORUS.

Clyt. Go in-go in! Cassandra! thee I mean, Enter thou too! since in this mansion Jove Has placed thee, nothing wrathfully, to share With many a slave the lavers, as thou stand'st By th' altar of our fortune-giving God.* Come forth from out that wain: neither be thou O'erweening, too high-stomach'd for thy lot;— Such once was that of great Alcmena's son.

Chor. O be persuaded; come down from thy

car.

Clyt. I have no time for dallying here; already The victims, rang'd for sacrifice, demand Our presence. Wouldst thou do our bidding, Take no long time in doing it. If thy tongue

* Κτησίου βωμού. The altar placed in the buttery, or place where provisions were kept, was consecrated to Ctesian Jove, or Jove the Guardian of Property.

Ill do these notes of grief accord with him.
Cass. Oh Earth! oh Gods! Apollo! oh Apollo!
Chor. Again she calls upon the Gods, blas-
pheming!

Cass. Apollo! O Apollo! my Apollo!
Now for the second time thou hast undone me.
Chor. She seems to prophesy of her own woes.
God dwells within her, though she be a slave!
Cass. Apollo! O Apollo! my Apollo!

Ah! whither hast thou brought me? To what house?

Chor. Ask'st thou what house? It is the royal house

Of the Atrida-what I speak is truth.

Cass. Ha! ha! that dismal and abhorred house! The good Gods hate its dark and conscious walls!

It knows of kinsmen by their kinsmen slain,
And many a horrid death-rope swung!
A house, where men like beasts are slain!
The floor is all in blood!

Chor. The stranger's like a quick-nosed hound,

away!

The bull is enchafed and hoodwink'd, and roars; His black branching horns have received the death-stab.

bath,

Beside the great smouldering caldron that burns! The caldron burns,-it has a deadly blue!

Chor. No deep skill boast I in the spell of Gods; And yet methinks all that she says bears in't The stamp of ill; but when has aught of good From the divining power to man accrued? Its deep ambiguous terms the truth invest With mysteries that awe the inmost soul.

Cass. Alas! alas! ah, wretch! ah, luckless fate! Myself, myself I moan!

Wretch that I am! why hast thou brought me here,

Unless to lie beside him in his death?
Is't not? what else? what other can it be?

Chor. O sure thou art one of a deep-raging soul, Driven mad by some god, and, (like her, the sweet bird,

Who wails Ityn, her Ityn,) with unwearied voice, But vex'd heart, pouring forth thy sad lay.

Cass. Ah, ah! the shrill Nightingale! O how I

They are all seated in the rooms above,
Chanting how Atè came into the house*
In the beginning: gloomily they look!
Each sings the lay in catches round, each has
Foam on her lips, and gnashes grim her teeth,
Where heavily the incestuous brother sleeps,
Stretch'd in pale slumber on the haunted bed.
Ha! do the shafts fly upright at the mark?
Fly the shafts right, or has the yew-bow miss'd?
Methinks the wild beast in the covert's hit;
Or rave I, dreaming of prophetic lies?
Come, bear thou witness, out with it on oath,
That I know well the old sins of this house.

Chor. How can an oath, the evil fix'd so fast, Help it or cure it? But thou movest our wonder, Bred in strange land, in city stranger-tongued, Far beyond seas, that thou shouldst speak as if Thou hadst been present at the scenes thou speak'st of.

Cass. Prophet Apollo gave me this high boon. Chor. From love of thee? the God, felt he de

sire?

Cass. Before this hour I fear'd for shame to tell it.

Chor. Ay, for great folks are delicate and nice. Cass. He was a champion, vehemently breath

ing

The breath of love and pleasing fire upon me. Chor. Came there a marriage then 'twixt him

and thee?

Cass. I said it should be, but I spoke him false.t Chor. At that time was thou of his arts possest? Cass. E'en so, that I was then a prophetess Foretelling to my country all its woes!

*The crime in the family of Atreus, here alluded to, was the adultery of Thyestes with Aërope, his brother's wife, which formed the subject of Euripides' Cress.

otherwise the first crime upon record of this unfortunate

family was the treacherous murder of Myrtilus by Pelops, on the false accusation of his wife Hippodamia. See the story told at full length, and not much to the credit of this young Grecian princess, in Eustathius, 185, edit. Rom. The intrigue of Thyestes and Aërope is alluded to also

in Eurip. Elec. 720.

to her of inspiration, and her chaste deception of him, All this story of Apollo's love for Cassandra, his gift

are commonly known. Lycophron, in his Alexandra, makes her give the same history of it.

Apollo's wrath?

Cass. For my transgression, none believed my words!

Chor. To us thy words seem worthy of belief.
Cass.
O! O! hu! hu! alas!
The pains again have seized me! my brain turns!
Hark to the alarum and prophetic cries!
The dizziness of horror swims my head!
D'ye see those yonder, sitting on the towers?
Like dreams their figures! Blood-red is their hair!
Like young ones murder'd by some kinsman
false!

Horrible shadows! with hands full of flesh!
Their bowels and their entrails they hold up,
Their own flesh, O most execrable dish!
They hold it! out of it their father ate!
But in revenge of them there's one who plots,
A certain homebred, crouching, coward lion;
Upon his lair the rolling lion turns,

And keeps house close, until the coming of
My master! said I master? Out! alas!
I am a slave, and I must bear the yoke.
King of the ships, and sacker of great Troy,
Thou know'st not what a hateful bitch's tongue
Glozing and fawning, sleekfaced all the while,
Will do! like Atè stealing in the dark!
Out on such daring! female will turn slayer
And kill the male! What name to call her? Snake,
Horrible monster, crested amphisbæna,
Or some dire Scylla dwelling amid rocks!
Ingulphing seamen in her howling caves!
The raving of Hell's mother fires her cheeks,
And, like a pitiless Mars, her nostrils breathe
To all around her war and trumpet's rage.
O what a shout was there! it tore the skies
As in the battle when the tide rolls back!
Twas the great championess-how fierce, how
fell!

No, 'tis all joy, and welcome home, sweet lord,
The war is o'er, the merry feast's begun.
Well, well, ye don't believe me-'tis all one.
For why? what will be, will be; time will come;
Ye will be there, and pity me, and say,
'She was indeed too true a prophetess.'

Chor. Thyestes' bloody feast I oft have heard of

Her drift beyond that point I cannot see.

Cass. I say, thou shalt see Agamemnon's death! Chor. What man such execrable deed designs? Cass. What man? I pity thee; thou art won

drous dim,

And hast o'erlooked my oracles indeed.

Chor. But they are dark, and hard for us to find. Cass. O what a mighty fire comes rolling on

me!

Help! help! Lycean Apollo! Ah me! ah me!
She there, that two-legg'd lioness! lying with
A wolf, the highbred lion being away,
Will kill me! woeful creature that I am!
And like one busy mixing poison up,
She'll fill me such a cup too in her ire!
She cries out, whetting all the while a sword
'Gainst him, 'tis me, and for my bringing here
That such a forfeit must be paid with death!
O why then keep this mockery on my head?

[Tearing her robes.

Away, away! die ye ere yet I die!
I will requite your blessings, thus, thus, thus!
Find out some other maiden, dight her rich,
Ay, dight her rich in miseries like me!
And lo! Apollo! himself! tearing off
My vest oracular! Oh! cruel God!
Thou hast beheld me, e'en in these thy robes,
Scoff'd at when I was with my kinsmen dear,
And made my enemies' most piteous despite,
And many a bad name had I for thy sake;
A Cybele's mad-woman, beggar priestess,
Despised, unheeded, beggar'd, and in hunger;
And yet I bore it all for thy sweet sake.
And now to fill thy cup of vengeance up,
Prophet, thou hast undone thy prophetess!
And led me to these passages of death!
A block stands for the altar of my sire;
It waits for me, upon its edge to die,
Stagger'd with blows-in hot red spouting blood!
Oh! oh! but the great gods will hear my cries
Shrilling for vengeance through the vaulted roofs !
The gods will venge us when we're dead and
cold.

Another gallant at death-deeds will come!
Who's at the gates? a young man fair and tall,
A stranger, by his garb, from foreign parts;
Or one who long since has been exiled here:
A stripling, murderer of his mother's breast!
Brave youth, avenger of his father's death!
He'll come to build the high-wrought architrave,
Surmounting all the horrors of the dome.

I say, the gods have sworn that he shall come.
His father's corse (his crest lies on the ground)
Rises, and towers before him on the road!
What mourning still? what still my eyes in tears?
And here, too, weeping on a foreign land?
I, who have seen high-tower'd Ilion's town
Fall, as it fell; whilst they who dwelt therein
Are, as they are! before high-judging Heaven!
I'll go and do it! I'll be bold to die!

I have a word with ye, ye gates of hell!
[To the gates of the palace as she is about to enter.
I pray ye, let me have a mortal stroke,
That without struggling, all this body's blood
Pouring out plenteously, in gentle stream
Of easy dying, I may close my eyes!

Chor. O woeful creature, woeful, too, and wise!
O maid, thou hast been wand'ring far and wide!
But if in earnest thou dost know thy fate,
Why like a heifer, goaded by a god,
Dost thou thus fearless to the altar walk?

Cass. Hide where I will; there's no escape

from fate.

Chor. Yet is there some advantage in delay. Cass. My day is come, by flight I should gain

little.

Chor. Know then, thou'lt suffer from being over bold.

Cass. But to die gloriously is honour's crown. Chor. None ever hears the happy speak such

words.

Cass. Oh Father! oh!-Thou and thy noble sons! [Starting back.

membrance

How many Persian dames, wedded in vain, Hath Athens of their noble husbands widow'd? Atoss. Astonied with these ills, my voice thus

long

Hath wanted utterance: griefs like these exceed
The power of speech or question: yet ev'n such,
Inflicted by the gods, must mortal man
Constrain'd by hard necessity endure.
But tell me all, without distraction tell me,
All this calamity, though many a groan
Burst from thy labouring heart. Who is not fallen?
What leader must we wail? What sceptred
chief

Dying hath left his troops without a lord?

Mess. Know then, in numbers the barbaric fleet

Was far superior: in ten squadrons, each

Of thirty ships, Greece plough'd the deep; of these

One held a distant station. Xerxes led

A thousand ships; their number well I know; Two hundred more, and seven, that swept the

seas

light.

Atoss. Which navy first advanced to the attack?

a ray

That brightens through the melancholy gloom. Mess. Artembares, the potent chief that led Ten thousand horse, lies slaughtered on the rocks Of rough Silenia. The great Dadaces,

Beneath whose standard march'd a thousand horse,

Roll'd on the wave-worn beach of Ajax' isle. Lilæus, Arsames, Argestes, dash

With violence in death against the rocks

They mean to separate, and in secret flight
Seek safety." At these words, the royal chief,
Little conceiving of the wiles of Greece
And gods averse, to all the naval leaders

dwelt

Near to the fountains of the Egyptian Nile,
Adeues, and Pheresba, and Pharnuchus
Fell from one ship. Matallus, Chrysa's chief,
That led his dark'ning squadrons, thrice ten
thousand,

On jet-black steeds, with purple gore distain'd
The yellow of his thick and shaggy beard.
The Magian Arabus, and Artames
From Bactra, mould'ring on the dreary shore
Lie low. Amistris, and Amphistreus there
Grasps his war-wearied spear; there prostrate
lies

The illustrious Ariomardus; long his loss
Shall Sardis weep: thy Mysian Sisames,
And Tharybis, that o'er the burden'd deep
Led five times fifty vessels; Lerna gave
The hero birth, and manly grace adorn'd
His pleasing form, but low in death he lies
Unhappy in his fate. Syennesis,
Cilicia's warlike chief, who dared to front
The foremost dangers, singly to the foes
A terror, there too found a glorious death.
These chieftains to my sad remembrance rise,
Relating but a few of many ills.

Atoss. This is the height of ill, ah me! and shame

To Persia, grief, and lamentation loud.
But tell me this, afresh renew thy tale :
What was the number of the Grecian fleet,
That in fierce conflict their bold barks should dare

cease

To dart his radiant beams, and dark'ning night
Ascends the temple of the sky, arrange

In three divisions your well-ordered ships,
And guard each pass, each outlet of the seas:
Others enring around this rocky isle

Of Salamis. Should Greece escape her fate,
And work her way by secret flight, your heads
Shall answer the neglect." This harsh command
He gave, exulting in his mind, nor knew
What Fate design'd. With martial discipline
And prompt obedience, snatching a repast,
Each mariner fix'd well his ready oar.
Soon as the golden sun was set, and night
Advanced, each train'd to ply the dashing oar,
Assumed his seat; in arms each warrior stood,
Troop cheering troop through all the ships of war.
Each to the appointed station steers his course;
And through the night his naval force each chief
Fix'd to secure the passes. Night advanced,
But not by secret flight did Greece attempt
To escape. The morn, all beauteous to behold,
Drawn by white steeds bounds o'er the enlight-

en'd earth;

At once from ev'ry Greek with glad acclaim
Burst forth the song of war, whose lofty notes
The echo of the island rocks return'd,
Spreading dismay through Persia's hosts, thus
fallen

From their high hopes; no flight this solemn strain
Portended, but deliberate valour bent

The pæan ended, with impetuous force