Epeisodion 3
Athena
Herald, give the signal and restrain the crowd; and let the piercing TyrrhenianThe Etruscans were regarded as the inventors of the trumpet. trumpet, filled with human breath, send forth its shrill blare to the people!
For while this council-hall is filling, it is good to be silent, and for my ordinances to be learned, by the whole city for everlasting time, and by these appellants, so that their case may be decided well.
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Chorus
Lord Apollo, be master of what is yours.
Say what part you have in this matter.
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Apollo
I have come both to bear witness—for this man was a lawful suppliant and a guest of my sanctuary, and I am his purifier from bloodshed—and to be his advocate myself. I am
responsible for the murder of his mother.
To Athena. Bring in the case, and, in accordance with your wisdom, decide it.
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Athena
To the Furies. It is for you to speak—I am only bringing in the case; for the prosecutor at the beginning, speaking first, shall rightly inform us of the matter.
Chorus
We are many, but we will speak briefly.
To Orestes. Answer our questions, one by one. Say first if you killed your mother.
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Orestes
I killed her. There is no denial of this.
Chorus
Of the three falls that win the wrestling match, this one is already ours.
Orestes
You make this boast over a man who is not down yet.
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Chorus
You must, however, say how you killed her.
Orestes
I will say it: with drawn sword in hand, I stabbed her in the throat.
Chorus
By whom were you persuaded and on whose advice?
Orestes
By the oracles of this god here; he is my witness.
Chorus
The prophet directed you to kill your mother?
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Orestes
Yes, and to this very hour, I do not blame my fortune.
Chorus
But if the jury’s vote catches hold of you, you’ll soon speak differently.
Orestes
I have good confidence. My father will send protection from his grave.
Chorus
Put your confidence in the dead now, after you have killed your mother!
Orestes
I do, for she was twice afflicted with pollution.
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Chorus
How so? Teach the judges this.
Orestes
By murdering her husband, she killed my father.
Chorus
And so, although you are alive, she is free of pollution by her death.She is freed from blood-guiltiness because her blood has been shed.
Orestes
But why did you not drive her into exile, while she lived?
Chorus
She was not related by blood to the man she killed.
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Orestes
Then am I my mother’s kin by blood?
Chorus
How else could she have nurtured you, murderer, beneath her belt? Do you reject the nearest kinship, that of a mother?
Orestes
Apollo, give your testimony now. Explain, on my behalf,
whether I was justified in killing her. For I do not deny that I did it, as it is done. But decide whether this bloodshed was, to your mind, just or not, so that I may inform the court.
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Apollo
I will speak justly before you, Athena’s great tribunal,—
since I am a prophet, I cannot lie. I have never yet, on my oracular throne, said anything about a man or woman or city that Zeus, the father of the Olympians, did not command me to say.
Learn how strong this plea of justice is;
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and I tell you to obey the will of my father; for an oath is not more powerful than Zeus.The oath taken by the judges (489) may pronounce Orestes guilty as to the fact; but as his deed was done at the command of Zeus, whose representative is his son, Zeus therefore assumes all moral responsibility.
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Chorus
Zeus, as you say, gave you this oracular command, to tell Orestes here to avenge his father’s murder but to take no account at all of the honor due his mother?
Apollo
Yes, for it is not the same thing—the murder of a noble man, honored by a god-given scepter, and his murder indeed by a woman, not by rushing arrows sped from afar, as if by an Amazon, but as you will hear, Pallas, and those
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who are sitting to decide by vote in this matter.
She received him from the expedition, where he had for the most part won success beyond expectation,Literally trafficked better—better either than his foes, the Trojans; or beyond expectation (since he was guilty of the death of his daughter); or possibly, without any implicit comparative force, simply well. in the judgment of those favorable to him; then, as he was stepping from the bath, on its very edge, she threw a cloak like a tent over it,
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fettered her husband in an embroidered robe, and cut him down. This was his death, as I have told it to you—the death of a man wholly majestic, commander of the fleet. As for that woman, I have described her in such a way as to whet the indignation of the people who have been appointed to decide this case.
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Chorus
Zeus gives greater honor to a father’s death, according to what you say; yet he himself bound his aged father, Cronus. How does this not contradict what you say? I call on you as witnesses turning to the judges to hear these things.
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Apollo
Oh, monsters utterly loathed and detested by the gods!
Zeus could undo fetters, there is a remedy for that, and many means of release. But when the dust has drawn up the blood of a man, once he is dead, there is no return to life. For this, my father has made no magic spells,
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although he arranges all other things, turning them up and down; nor does his exercise of force cost him a breath.
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Chorus
See how you advocate acquittal for this man! After he has poured out his mother’s blood on the ground, shall he then live in his father’s house in Argos?
Which of the public altars shall he use? What purification rite of the brotherhoodsKinsfolk, actual or fictitious, were united in phratriai, with common worship, offerings, and festivals. will receive him?
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Apollo
I will explain this, too, and see how correctly I will speak. The mother of what is called her child is not the parent, but the nurse of the newly-sown embryo.This notion appears in Egypt (Diodorus Siculus 1. 80, whose source was Hecataeus, an older contemporary of Aeschylus) and in various Greek authors later than Aeschylus, e.g. Eur.
Or. 552; Frag. 1064, the Pythagoreans cited by Stobaeus (Hense ii. 72). The passage in the play has been invoked as evidence that the Athenians of the fifth century B.C. were upholding, some the ancient mode of tracing descent from the mother (the argument of the Erinyes); others, the patrilinear theory advocated by Apollo.
The one who mounts is the parent, whereas she, as a stranger for a stranger, preserves the young plant, if the god does not harm it. And I will show you proof of what I say: a father might exist without a mother. A witness is here at hand, the child of Olympian Zeus,
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who was not nursed in the darkness of a womb, and she is such a child as no goddess could give birth to.
For my part, Pallas, as in all other matters, as I know how, I will make your city and people great; and I have sent this man as a suppliant to your sanctuary
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so that he may be faithful for all time, and that you, goddess, might win him and those to come after him as a new ally and so that these pledges of faith might remain always, for the later generations of these people to cherish.
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Athena
Am I to assume that enough has been said,
and shall I now command these jurors to cast an honest vote according to their judgment?
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Chorus
For our part, every bolt is already shot. But I am waiting to hear how the trial will be decided.
Athena
Why not? As for you, To Apollo and Orestes. how shall I arrange matters so that I will not be blamed by you?
Apollo
You have heard what you have heard;
and as you cast your ballots, keep the oath sacred in your hearts, friends.
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Athena
Hear now my ordinance, people of Attica, as you judge the first trial for bloodshed. In the future, even as now, this court of judges will always exist for the people of Aegeus.
And this Hill of Ares, the seat and camp of the Amazons, when they came with an army in resentment against Theseus, and in those days built up this new citadel with lofty towers to rival his, and sacrificed to Ares, from which this rock takes its name,
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the Hill of Ares:The Amazons, as daughters of Ares, invaded Attica to take vengeance on Theseus either, as one story reports, because he had carried off Antiope, their queen; or because he did not enclose the hill within the confines of his newly-founded city, which included the Acropolis. Aeschylus apparently rejects the legend whereby the Hill of Ares had its name from the fact that Ares was here tried for the murder of Halirrothius, a son of Poseidon, and acquitted by a tie vote of the gods, his judges.
on this hill, the reverence of the citizens, and fear, its kinsman, will hold them back from doing wrong by day and night alike, so long as they themselves do not pollute the laws with evil streams; if you stain clear water
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with filth, you will never find a drink.
Neither anarchy nor tyranny—this I counsel my citizens to support and respect, and not to drive fear wholly out of the city. For who among mortals, if he fears nothing, is righteous?
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Stand in just awe of such majesty, and you will have a defense for your land and salvation of your city, such as no man has, either among the Scythians or in Pelops’ realm. I establish this tribunal, untouched by greed,
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worthy of reverence, quick to anger, awake on behalf of those who sleep, a guardian of the land.
I have prolonged this advice to my citizens for the future; but now you must rise and take a ballot, and decide the case
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under the sacred obligation of your oath. My word has been spoken.
The judges rise from their seats and cast their ballots one by one during the following altercation.
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Chorus
And I counsel you not to dishonor us in any way, since our company can be a burden to your land.
Apollo
And I, for my part, command you to stand in fear of the oracles, both mine and Zeus’, and not cause them to be unfulfilled.
Chorus
Although it is not your office, you have respect for deeds of bloodshed. You will prophesy, dispensing prophecies that are no longer pure.
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Apollo
Then was my father mistaken in any way in his purposes when Ixion, who first shed blood, was a suppliant?
Chorus
You do argue! But if I fail to win the case,
I will once more inflict my company on this land as a burden.
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Apollo
But you have no honor, among both the younger and the older gods. I will win.
Chorus
You did such things also in the house of Pheres, when you persuaded the Fates to make mortals free from death.In atonement for having shed blood (according to one legend, that of the dragon at Delphi, according to another, that of the Cyclopes), Apollo was compelled by Zeus to serve as a thrall in the house of Admetus, son of Pheres. An ancient story, adopted by Aeschylus, reported that, when the time came for Admetus to die, Apollo, in gratitude for the kindness shown him by the prince, plied the Fates with wine (l. 728) and thus secured their consent that Admetus should be released from death on condition that some one should voluntarily choose to die in his stead. Euripides, in his Alcestis, tells how, when both the father and the mother of Admetus refused to give up to him the remnant of their days, his wife Alcestis died for him.
Apollo
Is it not right, then, to do good for a worshipper, especially when he is in need?
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Chorus
It was you who destroyed the old dispensations when you beguiled the ancient goddesses with wine.
Apollo
Soon, when you have lost the case,
you will spit out your venom—no great burden to your enemies.
The balloting is now ended.
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Chorus
Since you, a youth, would ride me down, an old woman, I am waiting to hear the verdict in the case, since I have not decided whether to be angry at the city.
Athena
It is my duty to give the final judgment
and I shall cast my vote for Orestes. For there was no mother who gave me birth; and in all things, except for marriage, whole-heartedly I am for the male and entirely on the father’s side. Therefore, I will not award greater honor to the death of a woman
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who killed her husband, the master of the house. Orestes wins, even if the vote comes out equal.
Cast the ballots out of the urns, as quickly as possible, you jurors who have been assigned this task. The ballots are turned out and separated.
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Orestes
O Phoebus Apollo! How will the trial be decided?
Chorus
O Night, our dark Mother, do you see this?
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Orestes
Now I will meet my end by hanging, or I will live.
Chorus
Yes, and we will be ruined, or maintain our honors further.
Apollo
Correctly count the ballots cast forth, friends, and be in awe of doing wrong in the division of the votes.
Error of judgment is the source of much distress, and the cast of a single ballot has set upright a house. The ballots are shown to Athena.
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Athena
This man is acquitted on the charge of murder, for the numbers of the casts are equal. Apollo disappears.
Orestes
Pallas, savior of my house!
I was deprived of a fatherland, and it is you who have given me a home there again. The Hellenes will say, The man is an Argive once again, and lives in his father’s heritage, by the grace of Pallas and of Loxias and of that third god, the one who accomplishes everything,
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the savior—the one who, having respect for my father’s death, saves me, seeing those advocates of my mother.
I will return to my home now, after I swear an oath to this land and to your peopleThe passage points to the league between Athens and Argos, formed after Cimon was ostracized (461 B.C.) and the treaty with Sparta denounced. for the future and for all time to come,
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that no captain of my land will ever come here and bring a well-equipped spear against them. For I myself, then in my grave, will accomplish it by failure without remedy,
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making their marches spiritless and their journeys
ill-omened, so that those who violate my present oath will repent their enterprise. But while the straight course is preserved, and they hold in everlasting honor this city of Pallas with their allied spears, I will be the more well-disposed to them.
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And so farewell—you and the people who guard your city. May your struggle with your enemies let none escape, bringing you safety and victory with the spear! Exit.
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