Tiresias
— Ay, and more, Dared you but listen.
Universal Anthology - v03
But if any one transgresses, and does violence to the laws, or thinks to dictate to his rulers, such an one can win no praise from me.
No, whomsoever the city may appoint, that man must be obeyed, in little things and great, in just things and unjust ; and I should feel sure that one who thus obeys would be a good ruler no less than a good subject, and in the storm of spears would stand his ground where he was set, loyal and daunt less at his comrade's side.
But disobedience is the worst of evils.
This it is that ruins cities ; this makes homes desolate ; by this, the ranks of allies are broken into headlong rout : but, of the lives whose course is fair, the greater part owes safety to obedience.
Therefore we must support the cause of order, and in no wise suffer a woman to worst us.
Better to fall from power, if we must, by a man's hand ; then we should not be called weaker than a woman.
Chorus — To us, unless our years have stolen our wit, thou seemest to say wisely what thou sayest.
Hcemon — Father, the gods implant reason in men, the highest of all things that we call our own. Not mine the skill — far from me be the quest ! — to say wherein thou speakest not aright ; and yet another man, too, might have some useful thought. At least, it is my natural office to watch, on thy behalf, all that men say, or do, or find to blame. For the dread of thy frown forbids the citizen to speak such words as would offend thine ear ; but I can hear these murmurs in the dark, these moanings of the city for this maiden ; " no woman," they say, " ever merited her doom less, — none ever was to die so shamefully for deeds so glorious as hers ; who, when her own brother had fallen in bloody strife, would not leave him unburied, to be devoured by carrion dogs, or by any bird ; — deserves not she the meed of golden honor ? " Such is the darkling rumor that spreads in secret. For me, my father, no treasure is so precious as thy wel fare. What, indeed, is a nobler ornament for children than a pros pering sire's fair fame, or for sire than son's? Wear not, then, one mood only in thyself; think not that thy word, and thine alone, must be right. For if any man thinks that he alone is wise, — that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer, — such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty. No, though a man be wise, 'tis no shame for him to learn many things, and to bend in season. Seest thou, beside the wintry torrent's course, how the trees that yield to it save every twig, while the stiff-necked perish root and branch ? And even thus he who keeps the sheet of his sail taut, and never slackens upsets his boat, and finishes his voyage with keel uppermost. Nay, forego thy wrath permit thyself to change. For younger man, may offer
;
if I, a
it,
SOPHOCLES' ANTIGONE. 371
my thought, it were far best, I ween, that men should be all-wise by nature ; but, otherwise — and oft the scale inclines not so — 'tis good also to learn from those who speak aright.
Chorus — Sire, 'tis meet that thou shouldest profit by his words, if he speaks aught in season, and thou, Haemon, by thy father's ; for on both parts there hath been wise speech.
Oreon — Men of my age — are we indeed to be schooled, then, by men of his ?
Hcemon — In nothing that is not right ; but if I shouldest look to my merits, not to my years.
am young, thou
Creon — Is it a merit to honor the unruly ?
I could wish no one to show respect for evil-doers.
Hcemon —
Creon — Then is not she tainted with that malady ?
Hcemon — Our Theban folk, with one voice, denies it.
Creon — Shall Thebes prescribe to me how I must rule ?
Hcemon — See, there thou hast spoken like a youth indeed. Creon — Am I to rule this land by other judgment than mine
Hcemon — Thou dost not respect them, when thou tramplest on the gods' honors.
own? — Hcemon
That is no city which belongs to one man.
Creon — Is not the city held to be the ruler's ?
Hcemon — Thou wouldst make a good monarch of a desert. Creon — This boy, it seems, is the woman's champion. Hcemon — If thou art a woman ; indeed, my care is for thee. Creon — Shameless, at open feud with thy father!
Hcemon — Nay, I
see thee offending against justice.
Creon — Do I offend, when I respect mine own prerogatives ?
Creon — O dastard nature, yielding place to a woman ! Hcemon —Thou wilt never find me yield to baseness.
Creon — All thy words, at least, plead for that girl.
Hcemon — And for thee, and for me, and for the gods below. Creon — Thou canst never marry her, on this side the grave. Hcemon — Then she must die, and in death destroy another.
Creon — How ! doth thy boldness run to open threats ?
Hcemon — What threat is to combat vain resolves
Creon — Thou shalt rue thy witless teaching of wisdom.
Hcemon —Wert thou not my father, would have called thee
unwise.
Creon — Thou woman's slave, use not wheedling speech with me. Hcemon — Thou wouldst speak, and then hear no reply
Creon — Sayest thou so Now by the heaven above us — be
sure of — thou shalt smart for taunting me in this opprobrious strain. Bring forth that hated thing, that she may die forthwith in his presence — before his eyes — at her bridegroom's side
it
!
?
I
?
?
it,
372 SOPHOCLES' (EDEPUS.
Hasmon — No, not at my side — never think it — shall she perish ; nor shalt thou ever set eyes more upon my face i — rave, then, with such friends as can endure thee. [Exit H. emon.
Chorus — The man is gone, 0 King, in angry haste ; a youthful mind, when stung, is fierce.
Creon — Let him do, or dream, more than man — good speed to him ! — But he shall not save these two girls from their doom.
Chorus — Dost thou indeed purpose to slay both ?
Creon — Not her whose hands are pure : thou sayest well.
Chorus — And by what doom mean'st thou to slay the other ? Creon — I will take her where the path is loneliest, and hide
her, living, in a rocky vault, with so much food set forth as piety prescribes, that the city may avoid a public stain. And there, pray ing to Hades, the only god whom she worships, perchance she will obtain release from death ; or else will learn, at last, though late, that it is lost labor to revere the dead. [Exit Creon.
THE DOWNFALL AND DEATH OF KING CEDIPUS. By SOPHOCLES.
(Version of Edward Fitzgerald. )
CEdipus, Priest, and Suppliants assembled before his Palace Gate,
Chorus.
CEdipus —
Children of Cadmus, and as mine to me,
When all that of the plague-struck city can
With lamentation loud, and sacrifice,
Beset the shrines and altars of the Gods
Through street and market, by the Temples twain Of Pallas, and before the Tomb that shrouds Ismenus his prophetic ashes — why
Be you thus gathered at my palace door,
Mute, with the Suppliant's olive branch in hand ? Asking, or deprecating, what ? which I,
Not satisfied from other lips to learn,
Myself have come to hear it from your own.
You, whose grave aspect and investiture
Announce the chosen oIracle of all,
Tell me the purport :
As King, and Father of his people too,
am here, you see,
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
To listen and what in me lies to do ;
For surely mine were but a heart of stone Not to be moved by such an embassy,
Nor feel my people's sorrows as my own.
Priest —
O (Edipus, our Father, and our King !
Of what a mingled company you see
This Supplication gathered at your door ;
Even from the child who scarce has learned to creep, Down to old age that little further can,
With all the strength of life that breathes between. You know how all the shattered city lies
Reeling a-wreck, and cannot right herself
Under the tempest of this pestilence,
That nips the fruitful growth within the bud, Strangles the struggling blossom in the womb,
With sudden death infects the living man,
Until the realm of Cadmus wastes, and Thebes
With her depopulation Hades feeds.
Therefore, myself and this mute company
In supplication at your altar sit,
Looking to you for succor ; looking not
As to a God, but to the Man of men,
Most like the God in man's extremity :
Who, coming here a stranger to the land,
Didst overcome the Witch who with her song Seduced, and slew the wisest and the best ;
For which all but divine deliverance Thebes
Called the strange man who saved her to the throne Left void by her hereditary king. — And now the kingdom looks to you once more
To you, the Master of the master mind,
To save her in a worse extremity :
When men, not one by one, but troop by troop,
Fall by a plague more deadly than the Sphinx,
Till Thebes herself is left to foreign arms
Assailable — for what are wall and tower,
Divinely built and founded as they be, — Without the rampart of the man within ?
And let not what of Cadmus yet survives
From this time forth regard you as the man
Who saved them once, by worse to perish now.
CEdipua —
Alas, my children ! telling me of that
My people groans with, knowing not yourselves
374
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
How more than any man among you, I,
Who bear the accumulated woes of all ;
So that you find me, coming when you may, Restlessly all day pacing up and down,
Tossing all night upon a sleepless bed, Endeavoring all that of myself I can,
And all of Heaven implore — thus far in vain. But if your King have seemed to pause awhile, 'Tis that I wait the issue of one hope,
Which, if accomplished, will accomplish all. Creon, my brother, and my second self
Beside the throne I sit on, to the shrine
Of Delphian Phoebus, — man's assured appeal
In all his exigence, — I have dispatched :
And long before you gathered at my door
Within my soul was fretting, lest To-day
That should have lighted him from Delphi back Pass over into night, and bring him not.
But come he must, and will ; and when he comes, Do Inot all, so far as man may do,
To follow where the God shall point the way, Denounce me traitor to the State I saved
And to the people who proclaimed me King. Your words are as a breath from Delphi, King, Prophetic of itself ; for even now
Forerunning Rumor buzzes in our ear
That he whose coming all await is here.
And as before the advent of a God,
The moving multitude divides — O Phoebus !
Be but the word he carries back to me
—
(Edipus —
Chorus
Chorus — Auspicious as well-timed ! And shall no less ;
(Edipus —
For look ! the laurel wreath about his brow Can but announce the herald of Success.
Enter Creon.
Son of Menoeceus ! Brother ! Brother king ! —
Oh, let impatience for the word you bring Excuse brief welcome to the messenger !
Be but the word as welcome ! —
As it shall,
Have you your ancient cunning to divine The darker word in which the God of Light
— (Edipus —
Creon
Enshrines his answer.
I know not whether most to hope or fear.
Speak ! for till I hear,
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
Oreon —
Am I to speak before the people here, Or to yourself within ?
(Edipus — Here, before all, Whose common cause it is.
Creon — To all then thus : When Delphi reached, and at the sacred shrine Lustration, sacrifice, and offering made,
I put the question I was charged withal,
The Prophetess of the three-footed throne, Conceiving with the vapor of the God
Which wrapt her, rising from Earth's center, round, At length convulsed to sudden answer broke : —
" O seven-gated City, by the Lyre
Compact, and peopled from a Dragon Sire !
Thebes feeds the Plague that slays her, nourishing Within her walls the slayer of her King. "
(Edipus —
The slayer of her King ? What king ?
Creon—
I know than Laius, son of Labdacus,
Who occupied the throne before you came ; That much of Oracle, methinks, is plain.
(Edipus —
A story rises on me from the past. Laius, the son of Labdacus — of whom I know indeed, but him I never saw.
Creon —
No ; he was slain before you set your foot Over the country's threshold.
(Edipus — Slain! By whom? Creon —
That to divine were to interpret all
That QSdipus himself is called to answer. Thus much is all we know,
The King was murdered by some roving band Of outlaws, who waylaid him on his road
To that same Delphi, whither he had gone
On some such sacred mission as myself.
(Edipus —
Yet of those roving outlaws, one at least
Yet breathes among us in the heart of Thebes.
Creon —
So saith the Oracle.
(Edipus — In the midst of all
None else
376
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
The citizens and subjects of the King
He slew : Creon —
So saith the Oracle.
(Edipus — But hold !
The story of this treason — all, you say,
Now known of how first made known in Thebes Creon —
By the one man of the King's retinue,
Who having 'scaped the fate which took the rest, As the assassin's foot were at his heels,
Half dead with fear, just reached the city gates With breath to tell the story.
(Edipus — To tell
And breathes still
Creon—
once again
know not that For having told the bewildered man,
As fast as hither he had fled, fled hence,
Where, the assassin's foot not on him then, His eye, the God declares, were on him now — So fled he to his native field again
Among his flocks and fellow-husbandmen.
(Edipus —
And thus the single witness you let slip,
Whose eye might even have singled out the man, As him the man's Oh, had but been by,
would have driven interrogation home,
Would the bewildered memory so have sifted
Of each minutest grain of circumstance — — How many, accoutered how, what people like
Now, by the lapse of time and memory,
Beyond recall into oblivion passed
But not to lose what yet of hope there
Let him be sent for, sought for, found, and brought.
Creon —
Meanwhile, default of him for whom you send, Or of uncertain memory when he comes,
Were not well, if still the God withhold
His revelation of the word we need,
To question of his Interpreter
(Edipus —
Of his Interpreter
Creon — Of whom so well,
As of Tiresias, the blind Seer of Thebes,
Whose years the God hath in his service counted Beyond all reach of human memory
—
?
?
? I
it it
I
if
if it
?
I !
is
:
!
it,
it,
?
SOPHOCLES' Q3DIPUS.
(Edipus —
So be it. But I marvel yet why Thebes, Letting the witness slip, then unpursued,
Or undetected, left the criminal,
Whom the King's blood, by whomsoever spilt, Cried out aloud to be revenged upon.
Creon —
What might be done we did. But how detect The roving robber, in whatever land,
Of friend or foe alike, outlawed of all, Wherever prey to pounce on on the wing,
Or housed in rock or forest, save to him Unknown, or inaccessible ? Besides,
Thebes soon had other business on her hand.
(Edipus —
Why, what of business to engage her more Than to revenge the murder of her King ?
Creon —
None other than the riddle-singing Sphinx Who, till you came to silence her, held Thebes From thinking of the dead to save herself.
(Edipus —
And leaving this which then you might have guessed, To guess at that which none of you could solve,
You have brought home a riddle on your heads Inextricable and more fatal far !
But I, who put the riddling Witch to rest,
This fatal riddle will unravel too,
And by swift execution following
The revelation, once more save the realm,
And wipe away the impiety and shame
Of Laius' yet unexpiated death.
For were no expiation to the God,
And to the welfare of this people due,
Were't not a shame thus unrevenged so long
To leave the slaughter of so great a King—
King Laius, the son of Labdacus,
Who from his father Polydore his blood
Direct from Cadmus and Agenor drew ?
Shame to myself, who, sitting on the throne
He sat on, wedded to the very Queen
Who should have borne him children, as to me
She bore them, had not an assassin's hand
Divorced them ere their wedded life bore fruit ! Therefore to this as 'twere my father's cause,
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
As of my people's — nay, why not my own, Who in his death am threatened by the hand Of him, whose eye now follows me about ? — With the Gods' aid do I devote myself.
I, QSdipus, albeit no Theban born,
By Thebes herself enthroned her sovereign King, Thus to the citizens of Thebes proclaim :
That whosoever of them knows by whom
King Laius, son of Labdacus, was slain,
Forthwith let him disclose it undismayed ;
Tea, though the criminal himself he were,
Let not the dread of deadly consequence
Revolt him from confession of crime ; — For he shall suffer nothing worse than this, Instant departure from the city, but
Uninjured, uninsulted, unpursued;
For though feloniously a King he slew,
Yet haply as a stranger unaware
That king was Laius ; and thus the crime
Half cleared of treason, half absolved by time. Nor, on the other hand, if any knows
Another guilty, let him not for love,
Or fear, or whatsoever else regard,
Flinch from a revelation that shall win
More from myself than aught he fears to lose — Nay, as a second savior of the State
Shall after me be called ; and who should not Save a whole people at the cost of one ?
But Him — that one — who would not at the cost Of self-confession save himself and all —
Him — were he nearest to my heart and hearth — Nearest and dearest — thus do I renounce :
That from the very moment that he stands,
By whatsoever, or by whom, revealed,
No man shall him bespeak, at home, abroad,
Sit with at table, nor by altar stand,
But, as the very Pestilence he were
Incarnate which this people now devours,
Him slay at once, or hoot and hunt him forth With execration from the city walls.
But in spite of promise or of threat,
The man who did, or knows who did, this deed, Still hold —in his bosom unrevealed — — That man and he here among us now
Man's vengeance may escape when he forswears
is
if, it
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
Participation in the crime, but not
The Gods', himself involving in the Curse Which, with myself and every man in Thebes, He shall denounce upon the criminal,
The Gods invoking to withhold from him That issue of the earth by which he lives, That issue of the womb by which himself Lives after him ; that in the deadly curse
By which his fellows perish he and his
May perish, or, if worse there be, by worse !
Chorus —
Beside Apollo's altar standing here,
That oath I swear, that neither I myself
Nor did myself, nor know who did this deed ; And in the curse I join on him who did,
Or, knowing him who did, will not reveal.
CEdipus —
'Tis well : and, all the city's seven gates closed, Thus solemnly shall every man in Thebes Before the altars of his country swear.
Chorus —
Well have you done, O Master, in so far
As human hand and wit may reach ; and lo !
The sacred Seer of Thebes, Tiresias,
To whom, next to God himself, we look
For Heaven's assistance, at your summons comes, In his prophetic raiment, staff in hand, Approaching, gravely guided as his wont,
But with a step, methinks, unwonted slow.
Enter Tiresias.
Tiresias, Minister and Seer of God,
Who, blind to all that others see without, See that within to which all else are blind ; Sequestered as you are with Deity,
You know, what others only know too well, The mortal sickness that confounds us all ; But you alone can tell the remedy.
For since the God whose Minister you are Bids us, if Thebes would be herself again, Revenge the murder of King Laius
By retribution on the murderer,
Who undetected walks among us now ; Unless by you, Tiresias, to whose lips,
As Phoebus his Interpreter we cling,
380
SOPHOCLES' CEDIPUS.
To catch the single word that he withholds, — And without which what he reveals is vain Therefore to you, Tiresias, you alone,
Do look this people and their Ruler — look, Imploring you, by that same inward light Which sees, to name the man who lurks unseen, And whose live presence is the death of all.
Tiresias —
Alas ! how worse than vain to be well armed When the man's weapon turns upon himself !
CEdipus —
I know not upon whom that arrow lights.
Tiresias —
If not on him that summoned, then on him Who, summoned, came. There is one remedy ; Let those who hither led me lead me hence.
(Edipus — —
Before the single word which you alone
Can speak — be spoken ? How is this, Tiresias, That to your King on such a summons come, You come so much distempered ?
Tiresias — For the King, With all his wisdom, knows not what he asks.
(Edipus —
And therefore asks that he may know from you, Seeing the God hath folded up his word
From human eyesight.
Tiresias — Why should I reveal What He I serve has chosen to conceal ?
CEdipus —
Is't not your office to interpret that
To man which he for man vouchsafes from Heaven ?
Tiresias —
What Fate hath fixed to come to pass come will, Whether revealed or not.
CEdipus — I know it must ; But Fate may cancel Fate, foretelling that Which, unpredicted, else would come to pass.
Tiresias —
Yet none the less I tell you, CEdipus,
That you, though wise, not knowing what you ask, I, knowing, shall not answer.
CEdipus — You will not ! Inexorable to the people's cries — — Plague-pitiless, disloyal to your King
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
Tiresias —
Oh ! you forsooth were taunting me but now With my distempered humor —
(Edipus — Who would not, When but a word, which you pretend to know, Would save a people ?
Tiresias — One of them at least It would not.
(Edipus — Oh, scarce any man, methinks, But would himself, though guiltless, sacrifice, If that would ransom all.
Tiresias — Yet one, you see, Obdurate as myself —
(Edipus —
You have not heard, perchance, Tiresias (Unless from that prophetic voice within), How through the city, by my herald's voice, With excommunication, death, or banishment, I have denounced, not him alone who did,
But him who, knowing who, will not reveal ?
Tiresias —
I hear it now.
(Edipus — And are inflexible To Fear as Pity ?
Tiresias — It might be, to Fear Inflexible by Pity ; else, why fear Invulnerable as I am in Truth,
And by the God I serve inviolate ?
(Edipus —
Is not your King a Minister of Zeus,
As you of Phoebus, and the King of Thebes Not more to be insulted or defied
Than any Priest or Augur in his realm ?
Tiresias —
Implore, denounce, and threaten as you may, What unrevealed I would, I will not say.
(Edipus —
You will not ! Mark then how, default of your Interpretation, I interpret you :
Either not knowing what you feign to know, You lock your tongue in baffled ignorance ;
Or, knowing that which you will not reveal,
I do suspect — Suspect ! why, stand you not Self-accused, self-convicted, and by me Denounced as he, that knowing him who did,
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
Will not reveal — nay, might yourself have done
The deed that you with some accomplice planned,
Could those blind eyes have aimed the murderous hand ?
Tiresias —
You say so ! Now then, listen in your turn
To that one word which, as it leaves my lips,
By your own Curse upon the Criminal Denounced, should be your last in Thebes to hear. For by the unerring insight of the God
You question, Zeus his delegate though you be Who lay this Theban people under curse
Of revelation of the murderer
Whose undiscovered presence eats away
The people's life — I tell you — You are he!
Chorus —
Forbear, old man, forbear ! And you, my King, Heed not the passion of provoked old age.
CEdipus —
And thus, in your blind passion of revenge, You think to 'scape contempt or punishment By tossing accusation back on me
Under Apollo's mantle.
Tiresias — Ay, and more, Dared you but listen.
Chorus — Peace, O peace, old man ! CEdipus —
Nay, let him shoot his poisoned arrows out ;
They fall far short of me.
Tiresias — Not mine, but those
Which Fate had filled my Master's quiver with,
And you have drawn upon yourself.
CEdipus — Your Master's ?
Your Master's ; but assuredly not His
To whom you point, albeit you see him not,
In his meridian dazzling overhead,
Who is the God of Truth as well as Light,
And knows as I within myself must know
If Memory be not false as Augury,
The words you put into his lips a Lie !
Not He, but Self — Self only — in revenge
Of self-convicted ignorance — Self alone, — Or with some self whom Self would profit by
As were it — Creon, say — smooth, subtle Creon, Moving by rule and weighing every word
As in the scales of Justice — but of whom
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS. 383
Whispers of late have reached me —Creon, ha! Methinks I scent another Master here !
Who, wearied of but secondary power
Under an alien King, and would belike
Exalt his Prophet for good service done — Higher than ever by my throne he stood And, now I think on't, bade me send for you Under the mask of Phoebus —
Chorus — Oh, forbear — Forbear, in turn, my lord and master !
Tiresias — Nay, Let him, in turn, his poisoned arrows, not From Phoebus' quiver, shoot, but to recoil When, his mad Passion having passed —
(Edijms — O vain Prerogative of human majesty,
That one poor mortal from his fellows takes,
And, with false pomp and honor dressing up, Lifts idol-like to what men call a Throne,
For all below to worship and assail !
That even the power which unsolicited
By aught but salutary service done
The men of Thebes committed to my hands, Some, restless under just authority,
Or jealous of not wielding it themselves,
Even with the altar and the priest collude,
And tamper with, to ruin or to seize !
Prophet and Seer forsooth, and Soothsayer !
Why, when the singing Witch contrived the noose Which strangled all who tried and none could loose, Where was the Prophet of Apollo then ?
'Twas not for one who poring purblind down Over the reeking entrail of the beast,
Nor gaping to the wandering bird in air, Nor in the empty silence of his soul
Feigning a voice of God inaudible,
Not he, nor any of his tribe —but I—
I, OEdipus, a stranger in the land,
And uninspired by all but mother wit, Silenced and slew the monster against whom Divine and human cunning strove in vain. And now again when tried, and foiled again, This Prophet — whether to revenge the past, And to prevent discomfiture to come,
Or by some traitor aiming at my throne
384
SOPHOCLES' OEDIPUS.
Suborned to stand a greater at his side
Than peradventure e'er he stood at mine, Would drag me to destruction ! But beware ! Beware lest, blind and aged as you are,
Wrapt in supposititious sanctity,
You, and whoever he that leagues with you, Meet a worse doom than you for me prepare.
Tiresias —
Quick to your vengeance, then ; for this same day That under Phoebus' fiery rein flies fast
Over the field of heaven, shall be the last
That you shall play the tyrant in.
CEdipus — O Thebes, You never called me Tyrant, from the day Since first I saved you !
Tiresias — And shall save again ; As then by coming, by departing now.
Enough : before the day that judges both
Decide between us, let them lead me home.
CEdipus — — Ay, lead him hence
— —
Hades anywhere !
home
Blind in his inward as his outward eye.
Tiresias —
Poor man ! that in your inward vision blind,
Know not, as I, that ere this day go down,
By your own hand yourself shall be consigned
To deeper night than now you taunt me with ;
When, not the King and Prophet that you were,
But a detested outcast of the land,
With other eyes and hands you feel your way
To wander through the world, begging the bread
Of execration from the stranger's hand
Denied you here, and thrust from door to door,
As though yourself the Plague you brought from Thebes; A wretch, self-branded with the double curse
Of such unheard, unnatural infamy,
As shall confound a son in the embrace
Of her who bore him to the sire he slew !
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS. 385
DEMUS AND HIS SERVANTS.
By AKISTOPHANES.
(From the " Knights. " Translated hy John Hookham Frere. )
[Aristophanes, the greatest of Greek comic poets, was born probably be tween b. c. 450 and 446, and died not later than b. c. 380. Little is known of his personal history beyond the allusions in his own works. His first comedy, the "Banqueters," appeared in b. c. 427, and was followed by oyer forty others, of which there are extant only eleven: "Acharnians," "Knights," "Clouds," "Wasps," "Peace," "Birds," " Lysistrata," " Thesmophoriazusae," "Progs," " Ecclesiazusm," and " Plutus. " Aristophanes is the sole extant representative of the so-called Old Comedy of Athens. ]
Demus, an old citizen of Athens, and in whom the Athenian people are personified = the John Bull or Uncle Sam of Athens.
Demosthenes > two leading generals of Athens during the Peloponnesian Nioias ) War, represented as slaves of Demus. J
Cleon, a tanner (the Paphlagonian, from ira<£Aa£a), mouth or foam),
steward to Demus and the leading democratic politician of Athens. Sausage Seller (afterward Agoraoritus).
Chorus of Knights.
Scene: Space before Demus' House.
After a noise of lashes and screams from behind the scenes, Demos thenes and Nioias enter in the dress of slaves.
Demosthenes —
Out ! out alas t what a scandal ! what a shame !
May Jove in his utter wrath crush and confound
That rascally new-bought Paphlagonian slave !
For from the very first day that he came — — Brought here for a plague and a mischief amongst us all We're beaten and abused continually.
Nicias [whimpering] —
I say so too, with all my heart I do,
A rascal, with his scandals and his lies ! A rascally Paphlagonian ! so he is !
Demosthenes —
Well, come now, if you like, I'll state your case
To the audience here before us. [To the audience. ] Here
are we
A couple of servants — with a master at home Next door to the hustings — He's a man in years,
vol. iii. —26
386
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS.
A kind of bean-fed1 husky, testy character, Choleric and brutal at times, and partly deaf. It's near about a month now that he went And bought a slave out of a tanner's yard,
A Paphlagonian born, and brought him home,
As wicked a slanderous wretch as ever lived. This fellow, the Paphlagonian, has found out The blind side of our master's understanding. Moreover, when we get things out of compliment As a present from our master, he contrives
To snatch 'em and serve 'em up before our faces.
I'd made a Spartan cake at Pylos lately,8
And mixed and kneaded it well, and watched the baking ; But he stole round before me and served it up :
And he never allows us to come near our master
To speak a word ; but stands behind his back
At mealtimes, with a monstrous leather flyflap,
Slapping and whisking it round and rapping us off. [Turning to Nicias] —
So now, my worthy fellow, we must take
A fixed determination. Where's the Paphlagonian ?
Nicias — —
He's fast asleep
On a heap of hides — the rascal ! with a belly full With a hash of confiscations half digested.
within there, on his back,
Demosthenes —
That's well ! — Now fill me a hearty, lusty draught.
Nicias —
Make the libation first, and drink this cup To the good Genius. —
Demosthenes [after a long draught]
O most worthy Genius !
Good Genius ! 'tis your genius that inspires me ! [Demosthenes remains in a sort of drunken burlesque ecstasy. Nicias —
Why, what's the matter ?
Demosthenes — I'm inspired to tell you
That you must steal the Paphlagonian's oracles
Whilst he's asleep.
Nicias — Oh dear, then, I'm afraid.
1 Allusion to the beans used in balloting.
[Exit Nicias.
8 After Demosthenes had blockaded four hundred of the principal citizens of Sparta in an island in the bay of Pylos, Cleon was sent to supersede him. Aided by the advice of Demosthenes, whom he retained as his lieutenant, he compelled the Spartans to surrender.
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS. 387
Demosthenes —
Come, I must meditate, and consult my pitcher ; And moisten my understanding a little more.
[Wliile Nicias is absent, Demosthenes is drinking repeatedly and getting drunk. —
Nicias [reentering with a packet]
How fast asleep the Paphlagonian was !
How mortally, Lord bless me ! did he snore ! However, I've contrived to carry off
The sacred Oracle that he kept so secret.
I've stolen it from him.
Demosthenes [very drunk] — That's my clever fellow !
Here, give us hold ;
Ay, there it
I must read them.
— [ With the papers in his hand.
you rascally Paphlagonian This was the prophecy that you kept so secret.
Nicias —
What's there?
Demosthenes — Why, there's thing to ruin him, With the manner of his destruction all foretold.
Nicias — As how
Demosthenes [very drunk] —
Why, the Oracle tells you how, distinctly,
And all about — in perspicuous manner — That jobber in hemp and flax first ordained To hold the administration of affairs. 1
Nicias —
Well, there's one jobber. Who's the next? Readonl
Demosthenes —
A cattle jobber must succeed to him. 1
Nicias — —
More jobbers well then what becomes of him
Demosthenes —
He, too, shall prosper, till viler rascal
Shall be raised up and shall prevail against him, In the person of Paphlagonian tanner,
A loud, rapacious, leather-selling ruffian.
Nicias —
Is foretold, then, that the cattle jobber Must be destroyed by the seller of leather
Demosthenes — Yes.
After the death of Pericles, Eucrates and Lysicles were the leaders of the people for short time.
1 a
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is,
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a
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388 ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS.
Mcias —
Oh, dear ! our sellers and jobbers are at an end.
Demosthenes —
Not yet ; there's still another to succeed him, Of a most uncommon notable occupation.
Nicias —
Who's that ?
Do tell me !
Must I ?
To be sure —
Demosthenes — Nicios— — Demosthenes
A sausage seller it is that supersedes him. Nieias —
A sausage seller ! marvelous, indeed !
Most wonderful ! But where can he be found ? Demosthenes —
We must seek him out.
Nicios — But see there, where he comes !
Sent hither providentially, as it were ! Demosthenes —
O happy man ! celestial sausage seller !
Friend, guardian, and protector of us all :
Come forward ; save your friends, and save the country.
Sausage Seller — Do you call me ?
Demosthenes — Yes, we called to you to announce The high and happy destiny that awaits you.
Nicios —
Come now, you should set him free from the incumbrance Of his table and basket ; and explain to him
The tenor and the purport of the Oracle,
While I go back to watch the Paphlagonian.
[Exit Nicias. Demosthenes [to the Sausagh Seller, gravely] —
Set these poor wares aside ; and now, — bow down
To the ground ; and adore the powers of earth and heaven. Sausage Seller —
Heyday ! Why, what do you mean ?
Demosthenes — O happy man !
Unconscious of your glorious destiny,
Now mean and unregarded ; but to-morrow, The mightiest of the mighty, Lord of Athens !
Sausage Seller —
Come, master, what's the use of making game ? Why can't ye let me wash the guts and tripe, And sell my sausages in peace and quiet ?
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS.
Demosthenes —
O simple mortal, cast these thoughts aside !
Bid guts and tripe farewell ! — Look there ! — Behold
[Pointing to the audience. The mighty assembled multitude before ye !
Sausage Seller [with a grumble of indifference] — Isee 'em. —
Demosthenes You shall be their lord and master, The sovereign and ruler of them all,
Of the assemblies and tribunals, fleets and armies. You shall trample down the Senate underfoot, Confound and crush the generals and commanders, Arrest, imprison, and confine in irons.
Sausage Seller — What I? —
Demosthenes YeB, you ; because the Oracle Predestines you to sovereign power and greatness.
Sausage Seller —
Are there any means of making a great man Of a sausage-making fellow such as I ?
Demosthenes —
The very means you have must make ye so,
Low breeding, vulgar birth, and impudence,
These, these must make ye what you're meant to be.
Sausage Seller —
I can't imagine that I'm good for much.
Demosthenes —
Alas ! But why do you say so ? What's the meaning Of these misgivings ? Tell me, are ye allied
To the families of the gentry ?
Sausage Seller — Naugh, not I. I'm of the lower order.
Demosthenes — What happiness ! —
What a footing it will give ye ! What a groundwork For confidence and favor at the outset.
Sausage Seller —
But bless ye ! only consider my education ! I can but barely read — in a kind of way.
Demosthenes —
That makes against ye ! — the only thing against ye — The being able to read in any way,
For now no lead nor influence is allowed
To liberal arts or learned education,
But to the brutal, base, and underbred.
390
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS.
Sausage Seller —
Still, I'm partly doubtful how I could Contrive to manage an administration.
Demosthenes —
The easiest thing in nature ! — nothing easier ! Stick to your present practice : follow it up
In your new calling. Mangle, mince, and mash, Confound and hack and jumble things together ! And interlard your rhetoric with lumps
Of mawkish, sweet, and greasy flattery.
Be fulsome, coarse, and bloody ! — For the rest, All qualities combine, all circumstances.
To entitle and equip you for command,
A filthy voice, a villainous countenance,
A vulgar birth and parentage and breeding. Place then this chaplet on your brow and rouse Your spirits to meet him.
Sausage Seller — Ay, but who will help me ? For all our wealthier people are alarmed
And terrified at him ; and the meaner sort
In a manner stupefied, grown dull and dumb.
Demosthenes —
Why there's a thousand lusty cavaliers,
Ready to back you, that detest and scorn him ; And every worthy, well-born citizen ;
And every candid, critical spectator ;
And I myself ; and the help of Heaven to boot. —
Nicias [in alarm from behind the scenes] —
Oh dear ! oh dear ! the Paphlagonian's coming.
Cleon — Enter Cleoit with a furious look and voice.
By heaven and earth ! you shall abide it dearly,
With your conspiracies and daily plots
Against the sovereign people ! Hah ! what's this ? — Dogs ! villains ! every soul of ye shall die.
Demosthenes —
Where are ye going ? Where are ye running ? Stop ! Stand firm, my noble, valiant sausage seller !
Never betray the cause. Your friends are nigh.
[During the last lines the Chorus of Knights are entering.
sight !
Chorus — To us, unless our years have stolen our wit, thou seemest to say wisely what thou sayest.
Hcemon — Father, the gods implant reason in men, the highest of all things that we call our own. Not mine the skill — far from me be the quest ! — to say wherein thou speakest not aright ; and yet another man, too, might have some useful thought. At least, it is my natural office to watch, on thy behalf, all that men say, or do, or find to blame. For the dread of thy frown forbids the citizen to speak such words as would offend thine ear ; but I can hear these murmurs in the dark, these moanings of the city for this maiden ; " no woman," they say, " ever merited her doom less, — none ever was to die so shamefully for deeds so glorious as hers ; who, when her own brother had fallen in bloody strife, would not leave him unburied, to be devoured by carrion dogs, or by any bird ; — deserves not she the meed of golden honor ? " Such is the darkling rumor that spreads in secret. For me, my father, no treasure is so precious as thy wel fare. What, indeed, is a nobler ornament for children than a pros pering sire's fair fame, or for sire than son's? Wear not, then, one mood only in thyself; think not that thy word, and thine alone, must be right. For if any man thinks that he alone is wise, — that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer, — such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty. No, though a man be wise, 'tis no shame for him to learn many things, and to bend in season. Seest thou, beside the wintry torrent's course, how the trees that yield to it save every twig, while the stiff-necked perish root and branch ? And even thus he who keeps the sheet of his sail taut, and never slackens upsets his boat, and finishes his voyage with keel uppermost. Nay, forego thy wrath permit thyself to change. For younger man, may offer
;
if I, a
it,
SOPHOCLES' ANTIGONE. 371
my thought, it were far best, I ween, that men should be all-wise by nature ; but, otherwise — and oft the scale inclines not so — 'tis good also to learn from those who speak aright.
Chorus — Sire, 'tis meet that thou shouldest profit by his words, if he speaks aught in season, and thou, Haemon, by thy father's ; for on both parts there hath been wise speech.
Oreon — Men of my age — are we indeed to be schooled, then, by men of his ?
Hcemon — In nothing that is not right ; but if I shouldest look to my merits, not to my years.
am young, thou
Creon — Is it a merit to honor the unruly ?
I could wish no one to show respect for evil-doers.
Hcemon —
Creon — Then is not she tainted with that malady ?
Hcemon — Our Theban folk, with one voice, denies it.
Creon — Shall Thebes prescribe to me how I must rule ?
Hcemon — See, there thou hast spoken like a youth indeed. Creon — Am I to rule this land by other judgment than mine
Hcemon — Thou dost not respect them, when thou tramplest on the gods' honors.
own? — Hcemon
That is no city which belongs to one man.
Creon — Is not the city held to be the ruler's ?
Hcemon — Thou wouldst make a good monarch of a desert. Creon — This boy, it seems, is the woman's champion. Hcemon — If thou art a woman ; indeed, my care is for thee. Creon — Shameless, at open feud with thy father!
Hcemon — Nay, I
see thee offending against justice.
Creon — Do I offend, when I respect mine own prerogatives ?
Creon — O dastard nature, yielding place to a woman ! Hcemon —Thou wilt never find me yield to baseness.
Creon — All thy words, at least, plead for that girl.
Hcemon — And for thee, and for me, and for the gods below. Creon — Thou canst never marry her, on this side the grave. Hcemon — Then she must die, and in death destroy another.
Creon — How ! doth thy boldness run to open threats ?
Hcemon — What threat is to combat vain resolves
Creon — Thou shalt rue thy witless teaching of wisdom.
Hcemon —Wert thou not my father, would have called thee
unwise.
Creon — Thou woman's slave, use not wheedling speech with me. Hcemon — Thou wouldst speak, and then hear no reply
Creon — Sayest thou so Now by the heaven above us — be
sure of — thou shalt smart for taunting me in this opprobrious strain. Bring forth that hated thing, that she may die forthwith in his presence — before his eyes — at her bridegroom's side
it
!
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372 SOPHOCLES' (EDEPUS.
Hasmon — No, not at my side — never think it — shall she perish ; nor shalt thou ever set eyes more upon my face i — rave, then, with such friends as can endure thee. [Exit H. emon.
Chorus — The man is gone, 0 King, in angry haste ; a youthful mind, when stung, is fierce.
Creon — Let him do, or dream, more than man — good speed to him ! — But he shall not save these two girls from their doom.
Chorus — Dost thou indeed purpose to slay both ?
Creon — Not her whose hands are pure : thou sayest well.
Chorus — And by what doom mean'st thou to slay the other ? Creon — I will take her where the path is loneliest, and hide
her, living, in a rocky vault, with so much food set forth as piety prescribes, that the city may avoid a public stain. And there, pray ing to Hades, the only god whom she worships, perchance she will obtain release from death ; or else will learn, at last, though late, that it is lost labor to revere the dead. [Exit Creon.
THE DOWNFALL AND DEATH OF KING CEDIPUS. By SOPHOCLES.
(Version of Edward Fitzgerald. )
CEdipus, Priest, and Suppliants assembled before his Palace Gate,
Chorus.
CEdipus —
Children of Cadmus, and as mine to me,
When all that of the plague-struck city can
With lamentation loud, and sacrifice,
Beset the shrines and altars of the Gods
Through street and market, by the Temples twain Of Pallas, and before the Tomb that shrouds Ismenus his prophetic ashes — why
Be you thus gathered at my palace door,
Mute, with the Suppliant's olive branch in hand ? Asking, or deprecating, what ? which I,
Not satisfied from other lips to learn,
Myself have come to hear it from your own.
You, whose grave aspect and investiture
Announce the chosen oIracle of all,
Tell me the purport :
As King, and Father of his people too,
am here, you see,
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
To listen and what in me lies to do ;
For surely mine were but a heart of stone Not to be moved by such an embassy,
Nor feel my people's sorrows as my own.
Priest —
O (Edipus, our Father, and our King !
Of what a mingled company you see
This Supplication gathered at your door ;
Even from the child who scarce has learned to creep, Down to old age that little further can,
With all the strength of life that breathes between. You know how all the shattered city lies
Reeling a-wreck, and cannot right herself
Under the tempest of this pestilence,
That nips the fruitful growth within the bud, Strangles the struggling blossom in the womb,
With sudden death infects the living man,
Until the realm of Cadmus wastes, and Thebes
With her depopulation Hades feeds.
Therefore, myself and this mute company
In supplication at your altar sit,
Looking to you for succor ; looking not
As to a God, but to the Man of men,
Most like the God in man's extremity :
Who, coming here a stranger to the land,
Didst overcome the Witch who with her song Seduced, and slew the wisest and the best ;
For which all but divine deliverance Thebes
Called the strange man who saved her to the throne Left void by her hereditary king. — And now the kingdom looks to you once more
To you, the Master of the master mind,
To save her in a worse extremity :
When men, not one by one, but troop by troop,
Fall by a plague more deadly than the Sphinx,
Till Thebes herself is left to foreign arms
Assailable — for what are wall and tower,
Divinely built and founded as they be, — Without the rampart of the man within ?
And let not what of Cadmus yet survives
From this time forth regard you as the man
Who saved them once, by worse to perish now.
CEdipua —
Alas, my children ! telling me of that
My people groans with, knowing not yourselves
374
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
How more than any man among you, I,
Who bear the accumulated woes of all ;
So that you find me, coming when you may, Restlessly all day pacing up and down,
Tossing all night upon a sleepless bed, Endeavoring all that of myself I can,
And all of Heaven implore — thus far in vain. But if your King have seemed to pause awhile, 'Tis that I wait the issue of one hope,
Which, if accomplished, will accomplish all. Creon, my brother, and my second self
Beside the throne I sit on, to the shrine
Of Delphian Phoebus, — man's assured appeal
In all his exigence, — I have dispatched :
And long before you gathered at my door
Within my soul was fretting, lest To-day
That should have lighted him from Delphi back Pass over into night, and bring him not.
But come he must, and will ; and when he comes, Do Inot all, so far as man may do,
To follow where the God shall point the way, Denounce me traitor to the State I saved
And to the people who proclaimed me King. Your words are as a breath from Delphi, King, Prophetic of itself ; for even now
Forerunning Rumor buzzes in our ear
That he whose coming all await is here.
And as before the advent of a God,
The moving multitude divides — O Phoebus !
Be but the word he carries back to me
—
(Edipus —
Chorus
Chorus — Auspicious as well-timed ! And shall no less ;
(Edipus —
For look ! the laurel wreath about his brow Can but announce the herald of Success.
Enter Creon.
Son of Menoeceus ! Brother ! Brother king ! —
Oh, let impatience for the word you bring Excuse brief welcome to the messenger !
Be but the word as welcome ! —
As it shall,
Have you your ancient cunning to divine The darker word in which the God of Light
— (Edipus —
Creon
Enshrines his answer.
I know not whether most to hope or fear.
Speak ! for till I hear,
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
Oreon —
Am I to speak before the people here, Or to yourself within ?
(Edipus — Here, before all, Whose common cause it is.
Creon — To all then thus : When Delphi reached, and at the sacred shrine Lustration, sacrifice, and offering made,
I put the question I was charged withal,
The Prophetess of the three-footed throne, Conceiving with the vapor of the God
Which wrapt her, rising from Earth's center, round, At length convulsed to sudden answer broke : —
" O seven-gated City, by the Lyre
Compact, and peopled from a Dragon Sire !
Thebes feeds the Plague that slays her, nourishing Within her walls the slayer of her King. "
(Edipus —
The slayer of her King ? What king ?
Creon—
I know than Laius, son of Labdacus,
Who occupied the throne before you came ; That much of Oracle, methinks, is plain.
(Edipus —
A story rises on me from the past. Laius, the son of Labdacus — of whom I know indeed, but him I never saw.
Creon —
No ; he was slain before you set your foot Over the country's threshold.
(Edipus — Slain! By whom? Creon —
That to divine were to interpret all
That QSdipus himself is called to answer. Thus much is all we know,
The King was murdered by some roving band Of outlaws, who waylaid him on his road
To that same Delphi, whither he had gone
On some such sacred mission as myself.
(Edipus —
Yet of those roving outlaws, one at least
Yet breathes among us in the heart of Thebes.
Creon —
So saith the Oracle.
(Edipus — In the midst of all
None else
376
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
The citizens and subjects of the King
He slew : Creon —
So saith the Oracle.
(Edipus — But hold !
The story of this treason — all, you say,
Now known of how first made known in Thebes Creon —
By the one man of the King's retinue,
Who having 'scaped the fate which took the rest, As the assassin's foot were at his heels,
Half dead with fear, just reached the city gates With breath to tell the story.
(Edipus — To tell
And breathes still
Creon—
once again
know not that For having told the bewildered man,
As fast as hither he had fled, fled hence,
Where, the assassin's foot not on him then, His eye, the God declares, were on him now — So fled he to his native field again
Among his flocks and fellow-husbandmen.
(Edipus —
And thus the single witness you let slip,
Whose eye might even have singled out the man, As him the man's Oh, had but been by,
would have driven interrogation home,
Would the bewildered memory so have sifted
Of each minutest grain of circumstance — — How many, accoutered how, what people like
Now, by the lapse of time and memory,
Beyond recall into oblivion passed
But not to lose what yet of hope there
Let him be sent for, sought for, found, and brought.
Creon —
Meanwhile, default of him for whom you send, Or of uncertain memory when he comes,
Were not well, if still the God withhold
His revelation of the word we need,
To question of his Interpreter
(Edipus —
Of his Interpreter
Creon — Of whom so well,
As of Tiresias, the blind Seer of Thebes,
Whose years the God hath in his service counted Beyond all reach of human memory
—
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SOPHOCLES' Q3DIPUS.
(Edipus —
So be it. But I marvel yet why Thebes, Letting the witness slip, then unpursued,
Or undetected, left the criminal,
Whom the King's blood, by whomsoever spilt, Cried out aloud to be revenged upon.
Creon —
What might be done we did. But how detect The roving robber, in whatever land,
Of friend or foe alike, outlawed of all, Wherever prey to pounce on on the wing,
Or housed in rock or forest, save to him Unknown, or inaccessible ? Besides,
Thebes soon had other business on her hand.
(Edipus —
Why, what of business to engage her more Than to revenge the murder of her King ?
Creon —
None other than the riddle-singing Sphinx Who, till you came to silence her, held Thebes From thinking of the dead to save herself.
(Edipus —
And leaving this which then you might have guessed, To guess at that which none of you could solve,
You have brought home a riddle on your heads Inextricable and more fatal far !
But I, who put the riddling Witch to rest,
This fatal riddle will unravel too,
And by swift execution following
The revelation, once more save the realm,
And wipe away the impiety and shame
Of Laius' yet unexpiated death.
For were no expiation to the God,
And to the welfare of this people due,
Were't not a shame thus unrevenged so long
To leave the slaughter of so great a King—
King Laius, the son of Labdacus,
Who from his father Polydore his blood
Direct from Cadmus and Agenor drew ?
Shame to myself, who, sitting on the throne
He sat on, wedded to the very Queen
Who should have borne him children, as to me
She bore them, had not an assassin's hand
Divorced them ere their wedded life bore fruit ! Therefore to this as 'twere my father's cause,
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
As of my people's — nay, why not my own, Who in his death am threatened by the hand Of him, whose eye now follows me about ? — With the Gods' aid do I devote myself.
I, QSdipus, albeit no Theban born,
By Thebes herself enthroned her sovereign King, Thus to the citizens of Thebes proclaim :
That whosoever of them knows by whom
King Laius, son of Labdacus, was slain,
Forthwith let him disclose it undismayed ;
Tea, though the criminal himself he were,
Let not the dread of deadly consequence
Revolt him from confession of crime ; — For he shall suffer nothing worse than this, Instant departure from the city, but
Uninjured, uninsulted, unpursued;
For though feloniously a King he slew,
Yet haply as a stranger unaware
That king was Laius ; and thus the crime
Half cleared of treason, half absolved by time. Nor, on the other hand, if any knows
Another guilty, let him not for love,
Or fear, or whatsoever else regard,
Flinch from a revelation that shall win
More from myself than aught he fears to lose — Nay, as a second savior of the State
Shall after me be called ; and who should not Save a whole people at the cost of one ?
But Him — that one — who would not at the cost Of self-confession save himself and all —
Him — were he nearest to my heart and hearth — Nearest and dearest — thus do I renounce :
That from the very moment that he stands,
By whatsoever, or by whom, revealed,
No man shall him bespeak, at home, abroad,
Sit with at table, nor by altar stand,
But, as the very Pestilence he were
Incarnate which this people now devours,
Him slay at once, or hoot and hunt him forth With execration from the city walls.
But in spite of promise or of threat,
The man who did, or knows who did, this deed, Still hold —in his bosom unrevealed — — That man and he here among us now
Man's vengeance may escape when he forswears
is
if, it
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
Participation in the crime, but not
The Gods', himself involving in the Curse Which, with myself and every man in Thebes, He shall denounce upon the criminal,
The Gods invoking to withhold from him That issue of the earth by which he lives, That issue of the womb by which himself Lives after him ; that in the deadly curse
By which his fellows perish he and his
May perish, or, if worse there be, by worse !
Chorus —
Beside Apollo's altar standing here,
That oath I swear, that neither I myself
Nor did myself, nor know who did this deed ; And in the curse I join on him who did,
Or, knowing him who did, will not reveal.
CEdipus —
'Tis well : and, all the city's seven gates closed, Thus solemnly shall every man in Thebes Before the altars of his country swear.
Chorus —
Well have you done, O Master, in so far
As human hand and wit may reach ; and lo !
The sacred Seer of Thebes, Tiresias,
To whom, next to God himself, we look
For Heaven's assistance, at your summons comes, In his prophetic raiment, staff in hand, Approaching, gravely guided as his wont,
But with a step, methinks, unwonted slow.
Enter Tiresias.
Tiresias, Minister and Seer of God,
Who, blind to all that others see without, See that within to which all else are blind ; Sequestered as you are with Deity,
You know, what others only know too well, The mortal sickness that confounds us all ; But you alone can tell the remedy.
For since the God whose Minister you are Bids us, if Thebes would be herself again, Revenge the murder of King Laius
By retribution on the murderer,
Who undetected walks among us now ; Unless by you, Tiresias, to whose lips,
As Phoebus his Interpreter we cling,
380
SOPHOCLES' CEDIPUS.
To catch the single word that he withholds, — And without which what he reveals is vain Therefore to you, Tiresias, you alone,
Do look this people and their Ruler — look, Imploring you, by that same inward light Which sees, to name the man who lurks unseen, And whose live presence is the death of all.
Tiresias —
Alas ! how worse than vain to be well armed When the man's weapon turns upon himself !
CEdipus —
I know not upon whom that arrow lights.
Tiresias —
If not on him that summoned, then on him Who, summoned, came. There is one remedy ; Let those who hither led me lead me hence.
(Edipus — —
Before the single word which you alone
Can speak — be spoken ? How is this, Tiresias, That to your King on such a summons come, You come so much distempered ?
Tiresias — For the King, With all his wisdom, knows not what he asks.
(Edipus —
And therefore asks that he may know from you, Seeing the God hath folded up his word
From human eyesight.
Tiresias — Why should I reveal What He I serve has chosen to conceal ?
CEdipus —
Is't not your office to interpret that
To man which he for man vouchsafes from Heaven ?
Tiresias —
What Fate hath fixed to come to pass come will, Whether revealed or not.
CEdipus — I know it must ; But Fate may cancel Fate, foretelling that Which, unpredicted, else would come to pass.
Tiresias —
Yet none the less I tell you, CEdipus,
That you, though wise, not knowing what you ask, I, knowing, shall not answer.
CEdipus — You will not ! Inexorable to the people's cries — — Plague-pitiless, disloyal to your King
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
Tiresias —
Oh ! you forsooth were taunting me but now With my distempered humor —
(Edipus — Who would not, When but a word, which you pretend to know, Would save a people ?
Tiresias — One of them at least It would not.
(Edipus — Oh, scarce any man, methinks, But would himself, though guiltless, sacrifice, If that would ransom all.
Tiresias — Yet one, you see, Obdurate as myself —
(Edipus —
You have not heard, perchance, Tiresias (Unless from that prophetic voice within), How through the city, by my herald's voice, With excommunication, death, or banishment, I have denounced, not him alone who did,
But him who, knowing who, will not reveal ?
Tiresias —
I hear it now.
(Edipus — And are inflexible To Fear as Pity ?
Tiresias — It might be, to Fear Inflexible by Pity ; else, why fear Invulnerable as I am in Truth,
And by the God I serve inviolate ?
(Edipus —
Is not your King a Minister of Zeus,
As you of Phoebus, and the King of Thebes Not more to be insulted or defied
Than any Priest or Augur in his realm ?
Tiresias —
Implore, denounce, and threaten as you may, What unrevealed I would, I will not say.
(Edipus —
You will not ! Mark then how, default of your Interpretation, I interpret you :
Either not knowing what you feign to know, You lock your tongue in baffled ignorance ;
Or, knowing that which you will not reveal,
I do suspect — Suspect ! why, stand you not Self-accused, self-convicted, and by me Denounced as he, that knowing him who did,
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS.
Will not reveal — nay, might yourself have done
The deed that you with some accomplice planned,
Could those blind eyes have aimed the murderous hand ?
Tiresias —
You say so ! Now then, listen in your turn
To that one word which, as it leaves my lips,
By your own Curse upon the Criminal Denounced, should be your last in Thebes to hear. For by the unerring insight of the God
You question, Zeus his delegate though you be Who lay this Theban people under curse
Of revelation of the murderer
Whose undiscovered presence eats away
The people's life — I tell you — You are he!
Chorus —
Forbear, old man, forbear ! And you, my King, Heed not the passion of provoked old age.
CEdipus —
And thus, in your blind passion of revenge, You think to 'scape contempt or punishment By tossing accusation back on me
Under Apollo's mantle.
Tiresias — Ay, and more, Dared you but listen.
Chorus — Peace, O peace, old man ! CEdipus —
Nay, let him shoot his poisoned arrows out ;
They fall far short of me.
Tiresias — Not mine, but those
Which Fate had filled my Master's quiver with,
And you have drawn upon yourself.
CEdipus — Your Master's ?
Your Master's ; but assuredly not His
To whom you point, albeit you see him not,
In his meridian dazzling overhead,
Who is the God of Truth as well as Light,
And knows as I within myself must know
If Memory be not false as Augury,
The words you put into his lips a Lie !
Not He, but Self — Self only — in revenge
Of self-convicted ignorance — Self alone, — Or with some self whom Self would profit by
As were it — Creon, say — smooth, subtle Creon, Moving by rule and weighing every word
As in the scales of Justice — but of whom
SOPHOCLES' (EDIPUS. 383
Whispers of late have reached me —Creon, ha! Methinks I scent another Master here !
Who, wearied of but secondary power
Under an alien King, and would belike
Exalt his Prophet for good service done — Higher than ever by my throne he stood And, now I think on't, bade me send for you Under the mask of Phoebus —
Chorus — Oh, forbear — Forbear, in turn, my lord and master !
Tiresias — Nay, Let him, in turn, his poisoned arrows, not From Phoebus' quiver, shoot, but to recoil When, his mad Passion having passed —
(Edijms — O vain Prerogative of human majesty,
That one poor mortal from his fellows takes,
And, with false pomp and honor dressing up, Lifts idol-like to what men call a Throne,
For all below to worship and assail !
That even the power which unsolicited
By aught but salutary service done
The men of Thebes committed to my hands, Some, restless under just authority,
Or jealous of not wielding it themselves,
Even with the altar and the priest collude,
And tamper with, to ruin or to seize !
Prophet and Seer forsooth, and Soothsayer !
Why, when the singing Witch contrived the noose Which strangled all who tried and none could loose, Where was the Prophet of Apollo then ?
'Twas not for one who poring purblind down Over the reeking entrail of the beast,
Nor gaping to the wandering bird in air, Nor in the empty silence of his soul
Feigning a voice of God inaudible,
Not he, nor any of his tribe —but I—
I, OEdipus, a stranger in the land,
And uninspired by all but mother wit, Silenced and slew the monster against whom Divine and human cunning strove in vain. And now again when tried, and foiled again, This Prophet — whether to revenge the past, And to prevent discomfiture to come,
Or by some traitor aiming at my throne
384
SOPHOCLES' OEDIPUS.
Suborned to stand a greater at his side
Than peradventure e'er he stood at mine, Would drag me to destruction ! But beware ! Beware lest, blind and aged as you are,
Wrapt in supposititious sanctity,
You, and whoever he that leagues with you, Meet a worse doom than you for me prepare.
Tiresias —
Quick to your vengeance, then ; for this same day That under Phoebus' fiery rein flies fast
Over the field of heaven, shall be the last
That you shall play the tyrant in.
CEdipus — O Thebes, You never called me Tyrant, from the day Since first I saved you !
Tiresias — And shall save again ; As then by coming, by departing now.
Enough : before the day that judges both
Decide between us, let them lead me home.
CEdipus — — Ay, lead him hence
— —
Hades anywhere !
home
Blind in his inward as his outward eye.
Tiresias —
Poor man ! that in your inward vision blind,
Know not, as I, that ere this day go down,
By your own hand yourself shall be consigned
To deeper night than now you taunt me with ;
When, not the King and Prophet that you were,
But a detested outcast of the land,
With other eyes and hands you feel your way
To wander through the world, begging the bread
Of execration from the stranger's hand
Denied you here, and thrust from door to door,
As though yourself the Plague you brought from Thebes; A wretch, self-branded with the double curse
Of such unheard, unnatural infamy,
As shall confound a son in the embrace
Of her who bore him to the sire he slew !
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS. 385
DEMUS AND HIS SERVANTS.
By AKISTOPHANES.
(From the " Knights. " Translated hy John Hookham Frere. )
[Aristophanes, the greatest of Greek comic poets, was born probably be tween b. c. 450 and 446, and died not later than b. c. 380. Little is known of his personal history beyond the allusions in his own works. His first comedy, the "Banqueters," appeared in b. c. 427, and was followed by oyer forty others, of which there are extant only eleven: "Acharnians," "Knights," "Clouds," "Wasps," "Peace," "Birds," " Lysistrata," " Thesmophoriazusae," "Progs," " Ecclesiazusm," and " Plutus. " Aristophanes is the sole extant representative of the so-called Old Comedy of Athens. ]
Demus, an old citizen of Athens, and in whom the Athenian people are personified = the John Bull or Uncle Sam of Athens.
Demosthenes > two leading generals of Athens during the Peloponnesian Nioias ) War, represented as slaves of Demus. J
Cleon, a tanner (the Paphlagonian, from ira<£Aa£a), mouth or foam),
steward to Demus and the leading democratic politician of Athens. Sausage Seller (afterward Agoraoritus).
Chorus of Knights.
Scene: Space before Demus' House.
After a noise of lashes and screams from behind the scenes, Demos thenes and Nioias enter in the dress of slaves.
Demosthenes —
Out ! out alas t what a scandal ! what a shame !
May Jove in his utter wrath crush and confound
That rascally new-bought Paphlagonian slave !
For from the very first day that he came — — Brought here for a plague and a mischief amongst us all We're beaten and abused continually.
Nicias [whimpering] —
I say so too, with all my heart I do,
A rascal, with his scandals and his lies ! A rascally Paphlagonian ! so he is !
Demosthenes —
Well, come now, if you like, I'll state your case
To the audience here before us. [To the audience. ] Here
are we
A couple of servants — with a master at home Next door to the hustings — He's a man in years,
vol. iii. —26
386
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS.
A kind of bean-fed1 husky, testy character, Choleric and brutal at times, and partly deaf. It's near about a month now that he went And bought a slave out of a tanner's yard,
A Paphlagonian born, and brought him home,
As wicked a slanderous wretch as ever lived. This fellow, the Paphlagonian, has found out The blind side of our master's understanding. Moreover, when we get things out of compliment As a present from our master, he contrives
To snatch 'em and serve 'em up before our faces.
I'd made a Spartan cake at Pylos lately,8
And mixed and kneaded it well, and watched the baking ; But he stole round before me and served it up :
And he never allows us to come near our master
To speak a word ; but stands behind his back
At mealtimes, with a monstrous leather flyflap,
Slapping and whisking it round and rapping us off. [Turning to Nicias] —
So now, my worthy fellow, we must take
A fixed determination. Where's the Paphlagonian ?
Nicias — —
He's fast asleep
On a heap of hides — the rascal ! with a belly full With a hash of confiscations half digested.
within there, on his back,
Demosthenes —
That's well ! — Now fill me a hearty, lusty draught.
Nicias —
Make the libation first, and drink this cup To the good Genius. —
Demosthenes [after a long draught]
O most worthy Genius !
Good Genius ! 'tis your genius that inspires me ! [Demosthenes remains in a sort of drunken burlesque ecstasy. Nicias —
Why, what's the matter ?
Demosthenes — I'm inspired to tell you
That you must steal the Paphlagonian's oracles
Whilst he's asleep.
Nicias — Oh dear, then, I'm afraid.
1 Allusion to the beans used in balloting.
[Exit Nicias.
8 After Demosthenes had blockaded four hundred of the principal citizens of Sparta in an island in the bay of Pylos, Cleon was sent to supersede him. Aided by the advice of Demosthenes, whom he retained as his lieutenant, he compelled the Spartans to surrender.
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS. 387
Demosthenes —
Come, I must meditate, and consult my pitcher ; And moisten my understanding a little more.
[Wliile Nicias is absent, Demosthenes is drinking repeatedly and getting drunk. —
Nicias [reentering with a packet]
How fast asleep the Paphlagonian was !
How mortally, Lord bless me ! did he snore ! However, I've contrived to carry off
The sacred Oracle that he kept so secret.
I've stolen it from him.
Demosthenes [very drunk] — That's my clever fellow !
Here, give us hold ;
Ay, there it
I must read them.
— [ With the papers in his hand.
you rascally Paphlagonian This was the prophecy that you kept so secret.
Nicias —
What's there?
Demosthenes — Why, there's thing to ruin him, With the manner of his destruction all foretold.
Nicias — As how
Demosthenes [very drunk] —
Why, the Oracle tells you how, distinctly,
And all about — in perspicuous manner — That jobber in hemp and flax first ordained To hold the administration of affairs. 1
Nicias —
Well, there's one jobber. Who's the next? Readonl
Demosthenes —
A cattle jobber must succeed to him. 1
Nicias — —
More jobbers well then what becomes of him
Demosthenes —
He, too, shall prosper, till viler rascal
Shall be raised up and shall prevail against him, In the person of Paphlagonian tanner,
A loud, rapacious, leather-selling ruffian.
Nicias —
Is foretold, then, that the cattle jobber Must be destroyed by the seller of leather
Demosthenes — Yes.
After the death of Pericles, Eucrates and Lysicles were the leaders of the people for short time.
1 a
it
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! a
it a
is,
a
?
a
?
is
a
!
388 ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS.
Mcias —
Oh, dear ! our sellers and jobbers are at an end.
Demosthenes —
Not yet ; there's still another to succeed him, Of a most uncommon notable occupation.
Nicias —
Who's that ?
Do tell me !
Must I ?
To be sure —
Demosthenes — Nicios— — Demosthenes
A sausage seller it is that supersedes him. Nieias —
A sausage seller ! marvelous, indeed !
Most wonderful ! But where can he be found ? Demosthenes —
We must seek him out.
Nicios — But see there, where he comes !
Sent hither providentially, as it were ! Demosthenes —
O happy man ! celestial sausage seller !
Friend, guardian, and protector of us all :
Come forward ; save your friends, and save the country.
Sausage Seller — Do you call me ?
Demosthenes — Yes, we called to you to announce The high and happy destiny that awaits you.
Nicios —
Come now, you should set him free from the incumbrance Of his table and basket ; and explain to him
The tenor and the purport of the Oracle,
While I go back to watch the Paphlagonian.
[Exit Nicias. Demosthenes [to the Sausagh Seller, gravely] —
Set these poor wares aside ; and now, — bow down
To the ground ; and adore the powers of earth and heaven. Sausage Seller —
Heyday ! Why, what do you mean ?
Demosthenes — O happy man !
Unconscious of your glorious destiny,
Now mean and unregarded ; but to-morrow, The mightiest of the mighty, Lord of Athens !
Sausage Seller —
Come, master, what's the use of making game ? Why can't ye let me wash the guts and tripe, And sell my sausages in peace and quiet ?
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS.
Demosthenes —
O simple mortal, cast these thoughts aside !
Bid guts and tripe farewell ! — Look there ! — Behold
[Pointing to the audience. The mighty assembled multitude before ye !
Sausage Seller [with a grumble of indifference] — Isee 'em. —
Demosthenes You shall be their lord and master, The sovereign and ruler of them all,
Of the assemblies and tribunals, fleets and armies. You shall trample down the Senate underfoot, Confound and crush the generals and commanders, Arrest, imprison, and confine in irons.
Sausage Seller — What I? —
Demosthenes YeB, you ; because the Oracle Predestines you to sovereign power and greatness.
Sausage Seller —
Are there any means of making a great man Of a sausage-making fellow such as I ?
Demosthenes —
The very means you have must make ye so,
Low breeding, vulgar birth, and impudence,
These, these must make ye what you're meant to be.
Sausage Seller —
I can't imagine that I'm good for much.
Demosthenes —
Alas ! But why do you say so ? What's the meaning Of these misgivings ? Tell me, are ye allied
To the families of the gentry ?
Sausage Seller — Naugh, not I. I'm of the lower order.
Demosthenes — What happiness ! —
What a footing it will give ye ! What a groundwork For confidence and favor at the outset.
Sausage Seller —
But bless ye ! only consider my education ! I can but barely read — in a kind of way.
Demosthenes —
That makes against ye ! — the only thing against ye — The being able to read in any way,
For now no lead nor influence is allowed
To liberal arts or learned education,
But to the brutal, base, and underbred.
390
ARISTOPHANES' KNIGHTS.
Sausage Seller —
Still, I'm partly doubtful how I could Contrive to manage an administration.
Demosthenes —
The easiest thing in nature ! — nothing easier ! Stick to your present practice : follow it up
In your new calling. Mangle, mince, and mash, Confound and hack and jumble things together ! And interlard your rhetoric with lumps
Of mawkish, sweet, and greasy flattery.
Be fulsome, coarse, and bloody ! — For the rest, All qualities combine, all circumstances.
To entitle and equip you for command,
A filthy voice, a villainous countenance,
A vulgar birth and parentage and breeding. Place then this chaplet on your brow and rouse Your spirits to meet him.
Sausage Seller — Ay, but who will help me ? For all our wealthier people are alarmed
And terrified at him ; and the meaner sort
In a manner stupefied, grown dull and dumb.
Demosthenes —
Why there's a thousand lusty cavaliers,
Ready to back you, that detest and scorn him ; And every worthy, well-born citizen ;
And every candid, critical spectator ;
And I myself ; and the help of Heaven to boot. —
Nicias [in alarm from behind the scenes] —
Oh dear ! oh dear ! the Paphlagonian's coming.
Cleon — Enter Cleoit with a furious look and voice.
By heaven and earth ! you shall abide it dearly,
With your conspiracies and daily plots
Against the sovereign people ! Hah ! what's this ? — Dogs ! villains ! every soul of ye shall die.
Demosthenes —
Where are ye going ? Where are ye running ? Stop ! Stand firm, my noble, valiant sausage seller !
Never betray the cause. Your friends are nigh.
[During the last lines the Chorus of Knights are entering.
sight !
