Aeschylus - The Choephori Libation Bearers

VIP免费

2024-12-24 0 0 188.78KB 74 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

The ChThe Ch

The Choo

oepep

epep

ephh

hoo

oriri

riri

(Libation Bearers)

Translated by E. D. A. Morshead

Orange Street Press Classics

AeschylAeschyl

Aeschylusus

usus

This text is published free of charge and can be freely distributed and redistributed in any

medium without penalty. It is published under the fair use provision of United States

entertainment use.

Adobe PDF formatting by James M. Esch

published in 1998 by Orange Street Press

http://www.keystonenet.com/~jesch/osp/

sparks@eserver.org

Original Greek text written in 450 B.C.E

This text is based upon the edition found in The Internet Classics Archive by Daniel C.

American copyright conventions, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part

in any form. Direct permission requests to classics@classics.mit.edu.

http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/choephori.html

Cover art: Attic RF vase. Orestes slaying Aegisthus and looking at fleeing Clytemnestra.

(Mid-5th century B.C.)

Aeschylus, choephori

Drr

raa

amm

maa

atis Ptis P

tis Ptis P

tis Perer

erer

ersoso

soso

sonaenae

naenae

nae

ORESTES, son of AGAMEMNON and CLYTEMNESTRA

CHORUS OF SLAVE WOMEN

ELECTRA, sister of ORESTES

A NURSE

CLYTEMNESTRA

AEGISTHUS

AN ATTENDANT

Scene

By the tomb of Agamemnon near the palace in Argos. ORESTES

and PYLADES enter, dressed as travellers. ORESTES carries two

locks of hair in his hand.

ORESTES

Lord of the shades and patron of the realm

That erst my father swayed, list now my prayer,

Hermes, and save me with thine aiding arm,

Me who from banishment returning stand

On this my country; lo, my foot is set

On this grave-mound, and herald-like, as thou,

Once and again, I bid my father hear.

And these twin locks, from mine head shorn, I bring,

Aeschylus, choephori

And one to Inachus the river-god,

My young life's nurturer, I dedicate,

And one in sign of mourning unfulfilled

I lay, though late, on this my father's grave.

For O my father, not beside thy corse

Stood I to wail thy death, nor was my hand

Stretched out to bear thee forth to burial.

What sight is yonder? what this woman-throng

Hitherward coming, by their sable garb

Made manifest as mourners? What hath chanced?

Doth some new sorrow hap within the home?

Or rightly may I deem that they draw near

Bearing libations, such as soothe the ire

Of dead men angered, to my father's grave?

Nay, such they are indeed; for I descry

Electra mine own sister pacing hither,

In moody grief conspicuous. Grant, O Zeus,

Grant me my father's murder to avenge-

Be thou my willing champion!

Pylades,

Pass we aside, till rightly I discern

Wherefore these women throng in suppliance.

Aeschylus, choephori

PYLADES and ORESTES withdraw; the CHORUS enters bearing

vessels for libation; ELECTRA follows them; they pace slowly

towards the tomb of Agamemnon.

CHORUS singing strophe 1

Forth from the royal halls by high command

I bear libations for the dead.

Rings on my smitten breast my smiting hand,

And all my cheek is rent and red,

Fresh-furrowed by my nails, and all my soul

This many a day doth feed on cries of dole.

And trailing tatters of my vest,

In looped and windowed raggedness forlorn,

Hang rent around my breast,

Even as I, by blows of Fate most stern

Saddened and torn.

antistrophe 1

Oracular thro' visions, ghastly clear,

Bearing a blast of wrath from realms below,

And stiffening each rising hair with dread,

Came out of dream-land Fear,

And, loud and awful, bade

The shriek ring out at midnight's witching hour,

And brooded, stern with woe,

Aeschylus, choephori

Above the inner house, the woman's bower

And seers inspired did read the dream on oath,

Chanting aloud In realms below

The dead are wroth;

Against their slayers yet their ire doth glow.

strophe 2

Therefore to bear this gift of graceless worth-

O Earth, my nursing mother!-

The woman god-accurs'd doth send me forth

Lest one crime bring another.

Ill is the very word to speak, for none

Can ransom or atone

For blood once shed and darkening the plain.

O hearth of woe and bane,

O state that low doth lie!

Sunless, accursed of men, the shadows brood

Above the home of murdered majesty.

antistrophe 2

Rumour of might, unquestioned, unsubdued,

Pervading ears and soul of lesser men,

Is silent now and dead.

Aeschylus, choephori

Yet rules a viler dread;

For bliss and power, however won,

As gods, and more than gods, dazzle our mortal ken.

Justice doth mark, with scales that swiftly sway,

Some that are yet in light;

Others in interspace of day and night,

Till Fate arouse them, stay;

And some are lapped in night, where all things are undone

strophe 3

On the life-giving lap of Earth

Blood hath flowed forth;

And now, the seed of vengeance, clots the plain-

Unmelting, uneffaced the stain.

And Ate tarries long, but at the last

The sinner's heart is cast

Into pervading, waxing pangs of pain.

antistrophe 3

Lo, when man's force doth ope

The virgin doors, there is nor cure nor hope

For what is lost,-even so, I deem,

Though in one channel ran Earth's every stream,

Aeschylus, choephori

Laving the hand defiled from murder's stain,

It were in vain.

epode

And upon me-ah me!-the gods have laid

The woe that wrapped round Troy,

What time they led me down from home and kin

Unto a slave's employ-

The doom to bow the head

And watch our master's will

Work deeds of good and ill-

To see the headlong sway of force and sin,

And hold restrained the spirit's bitter hate,

Wailing the monarch's fruitless fate,

Hiding my face within my robe, and fain

Of tears, and chilled with frost of hidden pain.

ELECTRA Handmaidens, orderers of the palace-halls,

Since at my side ye come, a suppliant train,

Companions of this offering, counsel me

As best befits the time: for I, who pour

Upon the grave these streams funereal,

With what fair word can I invoke my sire?

Shall I aver, Behold, I bear these gifts

From well-loved wife unto her well-loved lord,

Aeschylus, choephori

When 'tis from her, my mother, that they come?

I dare not say it: of all words I fail

Wherewith to consecrate unto my sire

These sacrificial honours on his grave.

Or shall I speak this word, as mortals use-

Give back, to those who send these coronals,

Full recompense-of ills for acts malign?

Or shall I pour this draught for Earth to drink,

Sans word or reverence, as my sire was slain,

And homeward pass with unreverted eyes,

Casting the bowl away, as one who flings

The household cleansings to the common road?

Be art and part, O friends, in this my doubt,

Even as ye are in that one common hate

Whereby we live attended: fear ye not

The wrath of any man, nor hide your word

Within your breast: the day of death and doom

Awaits alike the freeman and the slave.

Speak, then, if aught thou know'st to aid us more.

LEADER OF THE CHORUS

Thou biddest; I will speak my soul's thought out,

Revering as a shrine thy father's grave.

Aeschylus, choephori

ELECTRA

Say then thy say, as thou his tomb reverest.

LEADER

Speak solemn words to them that love, and pour.

ELECTRA

And of his kin whom dare I name as kind?

LEADER

Thyself; and next, whoe'er Aegisthus scorns.

ELECTRA

Then 'tis myself and thou, my prayer must name.

LEADER

Whoe'er they be, 'tis thine to know and name them.

ELECTRA

Is there no other we may claim as ours?

LEADER

Think of Orestes, though far-off he be.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TheChTheChTheChTheChTheChoooooepepepepephhhhhoooooririririri(LibationBearers)TranslatedbyE.D.A.MorsheadOrangeStreetPressClassicsAeschylAeschylAeschylAeschylAeschylusususususCopyrightstatement:Thistextispublishedfreeofchargeandcanbefreelydistributedandredistributedinanymediumwithoutpenalty.Itispublis...

展开>> 收起<<

Aeschylus - The Choephori Libation Bearers.pdf

共74页,预览15页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Aeschylus - The Choephori Libation Bearers

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: