Legendary Passages #0094 -XX ARGO-
The Children (Part 5) of Euripides' Medea.
Previously, Medea hatched a plan of vengeance upon her husband Jason, his new bride, and their children.
In this passage, Medea pretends to make peace, and so that her children may escape banishment, prepares a golden crown and robes for Jason's new bride.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
The Children (Part 5),
a Legendary Passage,
from Euripides' Medea,
trans. by E. P. Coleridge.
CHORUS (singing, strophe 1)
Sons of Erechtheus, heroes happy from of yore, children of the blessed
gods, fed on wisdom's glorious food in a holy land ne'er pillaged
by its foes, ye who move with sprightly step through a climate ever
bright and clear, where, as legend tells, the Muses nine, Pieria's
holy maids, were brought to birth by Harmonia with the golden hair.
(antistrophe 1)
And poets sing how Cypris drawing water from the streams of fair-flowing
Cephissus breathes o'er the land a gentle breeze of balmy winds, and
ever as she crowns her tresses with a garland of sweet rose-buds sends
forth the Loves to sit by wisdom's side, to take part in every excellence.
(strophe 2)
How then shall the city of sacred streams, the land that welcomes
those it loves, receive thee, the murderess of thy children, thee
whose presence with others is a pollution? 'Think on the murder of
thy children, consider the bloody deed thou takest on thee. Nay, by
thy knees we, one and all, implore thee, slay not thy babes.
(antistrophe 2)
Where shall hand or heart find hardihood enough in wreaking such
a fearsome deed upon thy sons? How wilt thou look upon thy babes,
and still without a tear retain thy bloody purpose? Thou canst not,
when they fall at thy feet for mercy, steel thy heart and dip in their
blood thy hand.
(JASON enters.)
JASON I am come at thy bidding, for e'en though thy hate for me is
bitter thou shalt not fail in this small boon, but I will hear what
new request thou hast to make of me, lady.
MEDEA Jason, I crave thy pardon for the words I spoke, and well thou
mayest brook my burst of passion, for ere now we twain have shared
much love. For I have reasoned with my soul and railed upon me thus,
"Ah! poor heart! why am I thus distraught, why so angered 'gainst
all good advice, why have I come to hate the rulers of the land, my
husband too, who does the best for me he can, in wedding with a princess
and rearing for my children noble brothers? Shall I not cease to fret?
What possesses me, when heaven its best doth offer? Have I not my
children to consider? do I forget that we are fugitives, in need of
friends?" When I had thought all this I saw how foolish I had been,
how senselessly enraged. So now do commend thee and think thee most
wise in forming this connection for us; but I was mad, I who should
have shared in these designs, helped on thy plans, and lent my aid
to bring about the match, only too pleased to wait upon thy bride.
But what we are, we are, we women, evil I will not say; wherefore
thou shouldst not sink to our sorry level nor with our weapons meet
our childishness.
I yield and do confess that I was wrong then, but now have I come
to a better mind. Come hither, my children, come, leave the house,
step forth, and with me greet and bid farewell to your father, be
reconciled from all past bitterness unto your friends, as now your
mother is; for we have made a truce and anger is no more. (The ATTENDANT
comes out of the house with the children.) Take his right hand; ah
me! my sad fate! when I reflect, as now, upon the hidden future. O
my children, since there awaits you even thus a long, long life, stretch
forth the hand to take a fond farewell. Ah me! how new to tears am
I, how full of fear! For now that I have at last released me from
my quarrel with your father, I let the tear-drops stream down my
tender cheek.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS From my eyes too bursts forth the copious tear;
O, may no greater ill than the present e'er befall!
JASON Lady, I praise this conduct, not that I blame what is past;
for it is but natural to the female sex to vent their spleen against
a husband when he trafficks in other marriages besides his own. But
thy heart is changed to wiser schemes and thou art determined on the
better course, late though it be; this is acting like a woman of sober
sense. And for you, my sons, hath your father provided with all good
heed a sure refuge, by God's grace; for ye, I trow, shall with your
brothers share hereafter the foremost rank in this Corinthian realm.
Only grow up, for all the rest your sire and whoso of the gods is
kind to us is bringing to pass. May I see you reach man's full estate,
high o'er the heads of those I hate! But thou, lady, why with fresh
tears dost thou thine eyelids wet, turning away thy wan cheek, with
no welcome for these my happy tidings?
MEDEA 'Tis naught; upon these children my thoughts were turned.
JASON Then take heart; for I will see that it is well with them.
MEDEA I will do so; nor will I doubt thy word; woman is a weak creature,
ever given to tears.
JASON Why prithee, unhappy one, dost moan o'er these children?
MEDEA I gave them birth; and when thou didst pray long life for them,
pity entered into my soul to think that these things must be. But
the reason of thy coming hither to speak with me is partly told, the
rest will I now mention. Since it is the pleasure of the rulers of
the land to banish me, and well I know 'twere best for me to stand
not in the way of thee or of the rulers by dwelling here, enemy as
I am thought unto their house, forth from this land in exile am I
going, but these children,-that they may know thy fostering hand,
beg Creon to remit their banishment.
JASON I doubt whether I can persuade him, yet must I attempt it.
MEDEA At least do thou bid thy wife ask her sire this boon, to remit
the exile of the children from this land.
JASON Yea, that will I; and her methinks I shall persuade, since
she is woman like the rest.
MEDEA I too will aid thee in this task, for by the children's hand
I will send to her gifts that far surpass in beauty, I well know,
aught that now is seen 'mongst men, a robe of finest tissue and a
chaplet of chased gold. But one of my attendants must haste and bring
the ornaments hither. (A servant goes into the house.) Happy shall
she be not once alone but ten thousand-fold, for in thee she wins
the noblest soul to share her love, and gets these gifts as well which
on a day my father's sire, the Sun-god, bestowed on his descendants.
(The servant returns and hands the gifts to the children.) My children,
take in your hands these wedding gifts, and bear them as an offering
to the royal maid, the happy bride; for verily the gifts she shall
receive are not to be scorned.
JASON But why so rashly rob thyself of these gifts? Dost think a
royal palace wants for robes or gold? Keep them, nor give them to
another. For well I know that if my lady hold me in esteem, she will
set my price above all wealth.
MEDEA Say not so; 'tis said that gifts tempt even gods; and o'er
men's minds gold holds more potent sway than countless words. Fortune
smiles upon thy bride, and heaven now doth swell her triumph; youth
is hers and princely power; yet to save my children from exile I would
barter life, not dross alone. Children, when we are come to the rich
palace, pray your father's new bride, my mistress, with suppliant
voice to save you from exile, offering her these ornaments the while;
for it is most needful that she receive the gifts in her own hand.
Now go and linger not; may ye succeed and to your mother bring back
the glad tidings she fain would hear (JASON, the ATTENDANT, and the
children go out together.)
CHORUS (singing, strophe 1)
Gone, gone is every hope I had that the children yet might live;
forth to their doom they now proceed. The hapless bride will take,
ay, take the golden crown that is to be her ruin; with her own hand
will she lift and place upon her golden locks the garniture of death.
(antistrophe 1)
Its grace and sheen divine will tempt her to put on the robe and
crown of gold, and in that act will she deck herself to be a bride
amid the dead. Such is the snare where into she will fall, such is
the deadly doom that waits the hapless maid, nor shall she from the
curse escape.
(strophe 2)
And thou, poor wretch, who to thy sorrow art wedding a king's daughter,
little thinkest of the doom thou art bringing on thy children's life,
or of the cruel death that waits thy bride. Woe is thee! how art thou
fallen from thy high estate!
(antistrophe 2)
Next do I bewail thy sorrows, O mother hapless in thy children, thou
who wilt slay thy babes because thou hast a rival, the babes thy husband
hath deserted impiously to join him to another bride. (The ATTENDANT
enters with the children.)
ATTENDANT Thy children, lady, are from exile freed, and gladly did
the royal bride accept thy gifts in her own hands, and so thy children
made their peace with her.
MEDEA Ah!
ATTENDANT Why art so disquieted in thy prosperous hour? Why turnest
thou thy cheek away, and hast no welcome for my glad news?
MEDEA Ah me!
ATTENDANT These groans but ill accord with the news I bring.
MEDEA Ah me! once more I say.
ATTENDANT Have I unwittingly announced some evil tidings? Have I
erred in thinking my news was good?
MEDEA Thy news is as it is; I blame thee not.
ATTENDANT Then why this downcast eye, these floods of tears?
MEDEA Old friend, needs must I weep; for the gods and I with fell
intent devised these schemes.
ATTENDANT Be of good cheer; thou too of a surety shalt by thy sons
yet be brought home again.
MEDEA Ere that shall I bring others to their home, ah! woe is me.
ATTENDANT Thou art not the only mother from thy children reft. Bear
patiently thy troubles as a mortal must.
MEDEA I will obey; go thou within the house and make the day's provision
for the children. (The ATTENDANT enters the house.)
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
This passage continues next episode, as Medea's plan comes to fruition, and the fate of the princess is revealed by a palace messenger.
Greek and Roman mythology from the original sources, from Atlantis to Hercules to the Trojan War. Email: LegendaryPassages@gmail.com
Friday, August 31, 2018
Friday, July 27, 2018
LP0093 -XIX ARGO- Aegeus (Part 4) of Euripides' Medea
Legendary Passages #0093 -XIX ARGO-
Aegeus (Part 4) of Euripides' Medea.
Previously, Medea decided not to take vengeance on Jason or his new wife until she could secure some safe haven for herself.
In this passage, Aegeus, father of Theseus, offers Medea safe haven in Athens.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
Aegeus (Part 4),
a Legendary Passage,
from Euripides' Medea,
trans. by E. P. Coleridge.
CHORUS (singing, strophe 1)
When in excess and past all limits Love doth come, he brings not
glory or repute to man; but if the Cyprian queen in moderate might
approach, no goddess is so full of charm as she. Never, O never, lady
mine, discharge at me from thy golden bow a shaft invincible, in passion's
venom dipped.
(antistrophe 1)
On me may chastity, heaven's fairest gift, look with a favouring
eye; never may Cypris, goddess dread, fasten on me a temper to dispute,
or restless jealousy, smiting my soul with mad desire for unlawful
love, but may she hallow peaceful married life and shrewdly decide
whom each of us shall wed.
(strophe 2)
O my country, O my own dear home! God grant I may never be an outcast
from my city, leading that cruel helpless life, whose every day is
misery. Ere that may I this life complete and yield to death, ay,
death; for there is no misery that doth surpass the loss of fatherland.
(antistrophe 2)
I have seen with mine eyes, nor from the lips of others have I the
lesson learnt; no city, not one friend doth pity thee in this thine
awful woe. May he perish and find no favour, whoso hath not in him
honour for his friends, freely unlocking his heart to them. Never
shall he be friend of mine. (MEDEA has been seated in despair on
her door-step during the choral song. AEGEUS and his attendants enter.)
AEGEUS All hail, Medea! no man knoweth fairer prelude to the greeting
of friends than this.
MEDEA All hail to thee likewise, Aegeus, son of wise Pandion. Whence
comest thou to this land?
AEGEUS From Phoebus' ancient oracle.
MEDEA What took thee on thy travels to the prophetic centre of the
earth?
AEGEUS The wish to ask how I might raise up seed unto myself.
MEDEA Pray tell me, hast thou till now dragged on a childless life?
AEGEUS I have no child owing to the visitation of some god.
MEDEA Hast thou a wife, or hast thou never known the married state?
AEGEUS I have a wife joined to me in wedlock's bond.
MEDEA What said Phoebus to thee as to children?
AEGEUS Words too subtle for man to comprehend.
MEDEA Surely I may learn the god's answer?
AEGEUS Most assuredly, for it is just thy subtle wit it needs.
MEDEA What said the god? speak, if I may hear it.
AEGEUS He bade me "not loose the wineskin's pendent neck."
MEDEA Till when? what must thou do first, what country visit?
AEGEUS Till I to my native home return.
MEDEA What object hast thou in sailing to this land?
AEGEUS O'er Troezen's realm is Pittheus king.
MEDEA Pelops' son, a man devout they say.
AEGEUS To him I fain would impart the oracle of the god.
MEDEA The man is shrewd and versed in such-like lore.
AEGEUS Aye, and to me the dearest of all my warrior friends.
MEDEA Good luck to thee! success to all thy wishes!
AEGEUS But why that downcast eye, that wasted cheek?
MEDEA O Aegeus, my husband has proved most evil.
AEGEUS What meanest thou? explain to me clearly the cause of thy
despondency.
MEDEA Jason is wronging me though I have given him no cause.
AEGEUS What hath he done? tell me more clearly.
MEDEA He is taking another wife to succeed me as mistress of his
house.
AEGEUS Can he have brought himself to such a dastard deed?
MEDEA Be assured thereof; I, whom he loved of yore, am in dishonour
now.
AEGEUS Hath he found a new love? or does he loathe thy bed?
MEDEA Much in love is he! A traitor to his friend is he become.
AEGEUS Enough! if he is a villain as thou sayest.
MEDEA The alliance he is so much enamoured of is with a princess.
AEGEUS Who gives his daughter to him? go on, I pray.
MEDEA Creon, who is lord of this land of Corinth.
AEGEUS Lady, I can well pardon thy grief.
MEDEA I am undone, and more than that, am banished from the land.
AEGEUS By whom? fresh woe this word of thine unfolds.
MEDEA Creon drives me forth in exile from Corinth.
AEGEUS Doth Jason allow it? This too I blame him for.
MEDEA Not in words, but he will not stand out against it. O, I implore
thee by this beard and by thy knees, in suppliant posture, pity, O
pity my sorrows; do not see me cast forth forlorn, but receive me
in thy country, to a seat within thy halls. So may thy wish by heaven's
grace be crowned with a full harvest of offspring, and may thy life
close in happiness! Thou knowest not the rare good luck thou findest
here, for I will make thy childlessness to cease and cause thee to
beget fair issue; so potent are the spells I know.
AEGEUS Lady, on many grounds I am most fain to grant thee this thy
boon, first for the gods' sake, next for the children whom thou dost
promise I shall beget; for in respect of this I am completely lost.
'Tis thus with me; if e'er thou reach my land, I will attempt to champion
thee as I am bound to do. Only one warning I do give thee first, lady;
I will not from this land bear thee away, yet if of thyself thou reach
my halls, there shalt thou bide in safety and I will never yield thee
up to any man. But from this land escape without my aid, for I have
no wish to incur the blame of my allies as well.
MEDEA It shall be even so; but wouldst thou pledge thy word to this,
I should in all be well content with thee.
AEGEUS Surely thou dost trust me? or is there aught that troubles
thee?
MEDEA Thee I trust; but Pelias' house and Creon are my foes. Wherefore,
if thou art bound by an oath, thou wilt not give me up to them when
they come to drag me from the land, but, having entered into a compact
and sworn by heaven as well, thou wilt become my friend and disregard
their overtures. Weak is any aid of mine, whilst they have wealth
and a princely house.
AEGEUS Lady, thy words show much foresight, so if this is thy will,
I do not, refuse. For I shall feel secure and safe if I have some
pretext to offer to thy foes, and thy case too the firmer stands.
Now name thy gods.
MEDEA Swear by the plain of Earth, by Helios my father's sire, and,
in one comprehensive oath, by all the race of gods.
AEGEUS What shall I swear to do, from what refrain? tell me that.
MEDEA Swear that thou wilt never of thyself expel me from thy land,
nor, whilst life is thine, permit any other, one of my foes maybe,
to hale me thence if so he will.
AEGEUS By Earth I swear, by the Sun-god's holy beam and by all the
host of heaven that I will stand fast to the terms I hear thee make.
MEDEA 'Tis enough. If thou shouldst break this oath, what curse dost
thou invoke upon thyself?
AEGEUS Whate'er betides the impious.
MEDEA Go in peace; all is well, and I with what speed I may, will
to thy city come, when I have wrought my purpose and obtained my wish.
(AEGEUS and his retinue depart.)
CHORUS (chanting) May Maia's princely son go with thee on thy way
to bring thee to thy home, and mayest thou attain that on which thy
soul is set so firmly, for to my mind thou seemest a generous man,
O Aegeus.
MEDEA O Zeus, and Justice, child of Zeus, and Sun-god's light, now
will triumph o'er my foes, kind friends; on victory's road have I
set forth; good hope have I of wreaking vengeance on those I hate.
For where we were in most distress this stranger hath appeared, to
be a haven in my counsels; to him will we make fast the cables of
our ship when we come to the town and citadel of Pallas. But now will
I explain to thee my plans in full; do not expect to hear a pleasant
tale. A servant of mine will I to Jason send and crave an interview;
then when he comes I will address him with soft words, say, "this
pleases me," and, "that is well," even the marriage with the princess,
which my treacherous lord is celebrating, and add "it suits us both,
'twas well thought out"; then will I entreat that here my children
may abide, not that I mean to leave them in a hostile land for foes
to flout, but that I may slay the king's daughter by guile. For I
will send them with gifts in their hands, carrying them unto the bride
to save them from banishment, a robe of finest wool and a chaplet
of gold. And if these ornaments she take and put them on, miserably
shall she die, and likewise everyone who touches her; with such fell
poisons will I smear my gifts. And here I quit this theme; but I shudder
at the deed I must do next; for I will slay the children I have borne;
there is none shall take them from my toils; and when I have utterly
confounded Jason's house I will leave the land, escaping punishment
for my dear children's murder, after my most unholy deed. For I cannot
endure the taunts of enemies, kind friends; enough! what gain is life
to me? I have no country, home, or refuge left. O, I did wrong, that
hour I left my father's home, persuaded by that Hellene's words, who
now shall pay the penalty, so help me God, Never shall he see again
alive the children I bore to him, nor from his new bride shall he
beget issue, for she must die a hideous death, slain by my drugs.
Let no one deem me a poor weak woman who sits with folded hands, but
of another mould, dangerous to foes and well-disposed to friends;
for they win the fairest fame who live then, life like me.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS Since thou hast imparted this design to me,
I bid thee hold thy hand, both from a wish to serve thee and because
I would uphold the laws men make.
MEDEA It cannot but be so; thy words I pardon since thou art not
in the same sorry plight that I am.
LEADER O lady, wilt thou steel thyself to slay thy children twain?
MEDEA I will, for that will stab my husband to the heart.
LEADER It may, but thou wilt be the saddest wife alive.
MEDEA No matter; wasted is every word that comes 'twixt now and then.
Ho! (The NURSE enters in answer to her call.) Thou, go call me Jason
hither, for thee I do employ on every mission of trust. No word divulge
of all my purpose, as thou art to thy mistress loyal and likewise
of my sex.
(The NURSE goes out.)
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
This passage continues next episode, as Medea pretends to make peace with Jason for the sake of their children.
Aegeus (Part 4) of Euripides' Medea.
Previously, Medea decided not to take vengeance on Jason or his new wife until she could secure some safe haven for herself.
In this passage, Aegeus, father of Theseus, offers Medea safe haven in Athens.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
Aegeus (Part 4),
a Legendary Passage,
from Euripides' Medea,
trans. by E. P. Coleridge.
CHORUS (singing, strophe 1)
When in excess and past all limits Love doth come, he brings not
glory or repute to man; but if the Cyprian queen in moderate might
approach, no goddess is so full of charm as she. Never, O never, lady
mine, discharge at me from thy golden bow a shaft invincible, in passion's
venom dipped.
(antistrophe 1)
On me may chastity, heaven's fairest gift, look with a favouring
eye; never may Cypris, goddess dread, fasten on me a temper to dispute,
or restless jealousy, smiting my soul with mad desire for unlawful
love, but may she hallow peaceful married life and shrewdly decide
whom each of us shall wed.
(strophe 2)
O my country, O my own dear home! God grant I may never be an outcast
from my city, leading that cruel helpless life, whose every day is
misery. Ere that may I this life complete and yield to death, ay,
death; for there is no misery that doth surpass the loss of fatherland.
(antistrophe 2)
I have seen with mine eyes, nor from the lips of others have I the
lesson learnt; no city, not one friend doth pity thee in this thine
awful woe. May he perish and find no favour, whoso hath not in him
honour for his friends, freely unlocking his heart to them. Never
shall he be friend of mine. (MEDEA has been seated in despair on
her door-step during the choral song. AEGEUS and his attendants enter.)
AEGEUS All hail, Medea! no man knoweth fairer prelude to the greeting
of friends than this.
MEDEA All hail to thee likewise, Aegeus, son of wise Pandion. Whence
comest thou to this land?
AEGEUS From Phoebus' ancient oracle.
MEDEA What took thee on thy travels to the prophetic centre of the
earth?
AEGEUS The wish to ask how I might raise up seed unto myself.
MEDEA Pray tell me, hast thou till now dragged on a childless life?
AEGEUS I have no child owing to the visitation of some god.
MEDEA Hast thou a wife, or hast thou never known the married state?
AEGEUS I have a wife joined to me in wedlock's bond.
MEDEA What said Phoebus to thee as to children?
AEGEUS Words too subtle for man to comprehend.
MEDEA Surely I may learn the god's answer?
AEGEUS Most assuredly, for it is just thy subtle wit it needs.
MEDEA What said the god? speak, if I may hear it.
AEGEUS He bade me "not loose the wineskin's pendent neck."
MEDEA Till when? what must thou do first, what country visit?
AEGEUS Till I to my native home return.
MEDEA What object hast thou in sailing to this land?
AEGEUS O'er Troezen's realm is Pittheus king.
MEDEA Pelops' son, a man devout they say.
AEGEUS To him I fain would impart the oracle of the god.
MEDEA The man is shrewd and versed in such-like lore.
AEGEUS Aye, and to me the dearest of all my warrior friends.
MEDEA Good luck to thee! success to all thy wishes!
AEGEUS But why that downcast eye, that wasted cheek?
MEDEA O Aegeus, my husband has proved most evil.
AEGEUS What meanest thou? explain to me clearly the cause of thy
despondency.
MEDEA Jason is wronging me though I have given him no cause.
AEGEUS What hath he done? tell me more clearly.
MEDEA He is taking another wife to succeed me as mistress of his
house.
AEGEUS Can he have brought himself to such a dastard deed?
MEDEA Be assured thereof; I, whom he loved of yore, am in dishonour
now.
AEGEUS Hath he found a new love? or does he loathe thy bed?
MEDEA Much in love is he! A traitor to his friend is he become.
AEGEUS Enough! if he is a villain as thou sayest.
MEDEA The alliance he is so much enamoured of is with a princess.
AEGEUS Who gives his daughter to him? go on, I pray.
MEDEA Creon, who is lord of this land of Corinth.
AEGEUS Lady, I can well pardon thy grief.
MEDEA I am undone, and more than that, am banished from the land.
AEGEUS By whom? fresh woe this word of thine unfolds.
MEDEA Creon drives me forth in exile from Corinth.
AEGEUS Doth Jason allow it? This too I blame him for.
MEDEA Not in words, but he will not stand out against it. O, I implore
thee by this beard and by thy knees, in suppliant posture, pity, O
pity my sorrows; do not see me cast forth forlorn, but receive me
in thy country, to a seat within thy halls. So may thy wish by heaven's
grace be crowned with a full harvest of offspring, and may thy life
close in happiness! Thou knowest not the rare good luck thou findest
here, for I will make thy childlessness to cease and cause thee to
beget fair issue; so potent are the spells I know.
AEGEUS Lady, on many grounds I am most fain to grant thee this thy
boon, first for the gods' sake, next for the children whom thou dost
promise I shall beget; for in respect of this I am completely lost.
'Tis thus with me; if e'er thou reach my land, I will attempt to champion
thee as I am bound to do. Only one warning I do give thee first, lady;
I will not from this land bear thee away, yet if of thyself thou reach
my halls, there shalt thou bide in safety and I will never yield thee
up to any man. But from this land escape without my aid, for I have
no wish to incur the blame of my allies as well.
MEDEA It shall be even so; but wouldst thou pledge thy word to this,
I should in all be well content with thee.
AEGEUS Surely thou dost trust me? or is there aught that troubles
thee?
MEDEA Thee I trust; but Pelias' house and Creon are my foes. Wherefore,
if thou art bound by an oath, thou wilt not give me up to them when
they come to drag me from the land, but, having entered into a compact
and sworn by heaven as well, thou wilt become my friend and disregard
their overtures. Weak is any aid of mine, whilst they have wealth
and a princely house.
AEGEUS Lady, thy words show much foresight, so if this is thy will,
I do not, refuse. For I shall feel secure and safe if I have some
pretext to offer to thy foes, and thy case too the firmer stands.
Now name thy gods.
MEDEA Swear by the plain of Earth, by Helios my father's sire, and,
in one comprehensive oath, by all the race of gods.
AEGEUS What shall I swear to do, from what refrain? tell me that.
MEDEA Swear that thou wilt never of thyself expel me from thy land,
nor, whilst life is thine, permit any other, one of my foes maybe,
to hale me thence if so he will.
AEGEUS By Earth I swear, by the Sun-god's holy beam and by all the
host of heaven that I will stand fast to the terms I hear thee make.
MEDEA 'Tis enough. If thou shouldst break this oath, what curse dost
thou invoke upon thyself?
AEGEUS Whate'er betides the impious.
MEDEA Go in peace; all is well, and I with what speed I may, will
to thy city come, when I have wrought my purpose and obtained my wish.
(AEGEUS and his retinue depart.)
CHORUS (chanting) May Maia's princely son go with thee on thy way
to bring thee to thy home, and mayest thou attain that on which thy
soul is set so firmly, for to my mind thou seemest a generous man,
O Aegeus.
MEDEA O Zeus, and Justice, child of Zeus, and Sun-god's light, now
will triumph o'er my foes, kind friends; on victory's road have I
set forth; good hope have I of wreaking vengeance on those I hate.
For where we were in most distress this stranger hath appeared, to
be a haven in my counsels; to him will we make fast the cables of
our ship when we come to the town and citadel of Pallas. But now will
I explain to thee my plans in full; do not expect to hear a pleasant
tale. A servant of mine will I to Jason send and crave an interview;
then when he comes I will address him with soft words, say, "this
pleases me," and, "that is well," even the marriage with the princess,
which my treacherous lord is celebrating, and add "it suits us both,
'twas well thought out"; then will I entreat that here my children
may abide, not that I mean to leave them in a hostile land for foes
to flout, but that I may slay the king's daughter by guile. For I
will send them with gifts in their hands, carrying them unto the bride
to save them from banishment, a robe of finest wool and a chaplet
of gold. And if these ornaments she take and put them on, miserably
shall she die, and likewise everyone who touches her; with such fell
poisons will I smear my gifts. And here I quit this theme; but I shudder
at the deed I must do next; for I will slay the children I have borne;
there is none shall take them from my toils; and when I have utterly
confounded Jason's house I will leave the land, escaping punishment
for my dear children's murder, after my most unholy deed. For I cannot
endure the taunts of enemies, kind friends; enough! what gain is life
to me? I have no country, home, or refuge left. O, I did wrong, that
hour I left my father's home, persuaded by that Hellene's words, who
now shall pay the penalty, so help me God, Never shall he see again
alive the children I bore to him, nor from his new bride shall he
beget issue, for she must die a hideous death, slain by my drugs.
Let no one deem me a poor weak woman who sits with folded hands, but
of another mould, dangerous to foes and well-disposed to friends;
for they win the fairest fame who live then, life like me.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS Since thou hast imparted this design to me,
I bid thee hold thy hand, both from a wish to serve thee and because
I would uphold the laws men make.
MEDEA It cannot but be so; thy words I pardon since thou art not
in the same sorry plight that I am.
LEADER O lady, wilt thou steel thyself to slay thy children twain?
MEDEA I will, for that will stab my husband to the heart.
LEADER It may, but thou wilt be the saddest wife alive.
MEDEA No matter; wasted is every word that comes 'twixt now and then.
Ho! (The NURSE enters in answer to her call.) Thou, go call me Jason
hither, for thee I do employ on every mission of trust. No word divulge
of all my purpose, as thou art to thy mistress loyal and likewise
of my sex.
(The NURSE goes out.)
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
This passage continues next episode, as Medea pretends to make peace with Jason for the sake of their children.
Friday, June 29, 2018
LP0092 -XVIII ARGO- Jason (Part 3), from Euripides' Medea
Legendary Passages #0092 -XVIII ARGO-
Jason (Part 3), from Euripides' Medea.
Previously, Medea was left by Jason for the daughter of Creon, and was then banished into exile. In this passage, Jason gives Medea his reasonings, but she wants no help from him.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
Jason (Part 3),
a Legendary Passage,
from Euripides' Medea,
trans. by E. P. Coleridge
CHORUS (singing, strophe 1)
Back to their source the holy rivers turn their tide. Order and the
universe are being reversed. 'Tis men whose counsels are treacherous,
whose oath by heaven is no longer sure. Rumour shall bring a change
o'er my life, bringing it into good repute. Honour's dawn is breaking
for woman's sex; no more shall the foul tongue of slander fix upon
us.
(antistrophe 1)
The songs of the poets of old shall cease to make our faithlessness
their theme. Phoebus, lord of minstrelsy, hath not implanted in our
mind the gift of heavenly song, else had I sung an answering strain
to the race of males, for time's long chapter affords many a theme
on their sex as well as ours.
(strophe 2)
With mind distraught didst thou thy father's house desert on thy
voyage betwixt ocean's twin rocks, and on a foreign strand thou dwellest
thy bed left husbandless, poor lady, and thou an exile from the land,
dishonoured, persecuted.
(antistrophe 2)
Gone is the grace that oaths once had. Through all the breadth of
Hellas honour is found no more; to heaven hath it sped away. For thee
no father's house is open, woe is thee! to be a haven from the troublous
storm, while o'er thy home is set another queen, the bride that is
preferred to thee. (As the CHORUS finishes its song, JASON enters,
alone. MEDEA comes out of the house.)
JASON It is not now I first remark, but oft ere this, how unruly
a pest is a harsh temper. For instance, thou, hadst thou but patiently
endured the will of thy superiors, mightest have remained here in
this land and house, but now for thy idle words wilt thou be banished.
Thy words are naught to me. Cease not to call Jason basest of men;
but for those words thou hast spoken against our rulers, count it
all gain that exile is thy only punishment. I ever tried to check
the outbursts of the angry monarch, and would have had thee stay,
but thou wouldst not forego thy silly rage, always reviling our rulers,
and so thou wilt be banished. Yet even after all this I weary not
of my goodwill, but am come with thus much forethought, lady, that
thou mayst not be destitute nor want for aught, when, with thy sons,
thou art cast out. Many an evil doth exile bring in its train with
it; for even though thou hatest me, never will I harbour hard thoughts
of thee.
MEDEA Thou craven villain (for that is the only name my tongue can
find for thee, a foul reproach on thy unmanliness), comest thou to
me, thou, most hated foe of gods, of me, and of all mankind? 'Tis
no proof of courage or hardihood to confront thy friends after injuring
them, but that worst of all human diseases-loss of shame. Yet hast
thou done well to come; for I shall ease my soul by reviling thee,
and thou wilt be vexed at my recital. I will begin at the very beginning.
I saved thy life, as every Hellene knows who sailed with thee aboard
the good ship Argo, when thou wert sent to tame and yoke fire-breathing
bulls, and to sow the deadly tilth. Yea, and I slew the dragon which
guarded the golden fleece, keeping sleepless watch o'er it with many
a wreathed coil, and I raised for thee a beacon of deliverance. Father
and home of my free will I left and came with thee to Iolcos, 'neath
Pelion's hills, for my love was stronger than my prudence. Next I
caused the death of Pelias by a doom most grievous, even by his own
children's hand, beguiling them of all their fear. All this have I
done for thee, thou traitor! and thou hast cast me over, taking to
thyself another wife, though children have been born to us. Hadst
thou been childless still, I could have pardoned thy desire for this
new union. Gone is now the trust I put in oaths. I cannot even understand
whether thou thinkest that the gods of old no longer rule, or that
fresh decrees are now in vogue amongst mankind, for thy conscience
must tell thee thou hast not kept faith with me. Ah! poor right hand,
which thou didst often grasp. These knees thou didst embrace! All
in vain, I suffered a traitor to touch me! How short of my hopes I
am fallen! But come, I will deal with thee as though thou wert my friend.
Yet what kindness can I expect from one so base as thee? But yet I
will do it, for my questioning will show thee yet more base. Whither
can I turn me now? to my father's house, to my own country, which
I for thee deserted to come hither? to the hapless daughters of Pelias?
A glad welcome, I trow, would they give me in their home, whose father's
death I compassed! My case stands even thus: I am become the bitter
foe to those of mine own home, and those whom I need ne'er have wronged
I have made mine enemies to pleasure thee. Wherefore to reward me
for this thou hast made me doubly blest in the eyes of many wife in
Hellas; and in thee I own a peerless, trusty lord. O woe is me, if
indeed I am to be cast forth an exile from the land, without one friend;
one lone woman with her babes forlorn! Yea, a fine reproach to thee
in thy bridal hour, that thy children and the wife who saved thy life
are beggars and vagabonds! O Zeus! why hast thou granted unto man
clear signs to know the shame in gold, while on man's brow no brand
is stamped whereby to gauge the villain's heart?
LEADER OF THE CHORUS There is a something terrible and past all cure,
when quarrels arise 'twixt those who are near and dear.
JASON Needs must I now, it seems, turn orator, and, like a good helmsman
on a ship with close-reefed sails, weather that wearisome tongue of
thine. Now, I believe, since thou wilt exaggerate thy favours, that
to Cypri, alone of gods or men I owe the safety of my voyage. Thou
hast a subtle wit enough; yet were it a hateful thing for me to say
that the Love-god constrained thee by his resistless shaft to save
my life. However, I will not reckon this too nicely; 'twas kindly
done, however thou didst serve me. Yet for my safety hast thou received
more than ever thou gavest, as I will show. First, thou dwellest in
Hellas, instead of thy barbarian land, and hast learnt what justice
means and how to live by law, not by the dictates of brute force;
and all the Hellenes recognize thy cleverness, and thou hast gained
a name; whereas, if thou hadst dwelt upon the confines of the earth,
no tongue had mentioned thee. Give me no gold within my halls, nor
skill to sing a fairer strain than ever Orpheus sang, unless there-with
my fame be spread abroad! So much I say to thee about my own toils,
for 'twas thou didst challenge me to this retort. As for the taunts
thou urgest against my marriage with the princess, I will prove to
thee, first, that I am prudent herein, next chastened in my love,
and last powerful friend to thee and to thy sons; only hold thy peace.
Since I have here withdrawn from Iolcos with many a hopeless trouble
at my back, what happier device could I, an exile, frame than marriage
with the daughter of the king? 'Tis not because I loathe thee for
my wife-the thought that rankles in thy heart; 'tis not because I
am smitten with desire for a new bride, nor yet that I am eager to
vie with others in begetting many children, for those we have are
quite enough, and I do not complain. Nay, 'tis that we-and this is
most important-may dwell in comfort, instead of suffering want (for
well I know that every whilom friend avoids the poor), and that
I might rear my sons as doth befit my house; further, that I might
be the father of brothers for the children thou hast borne, and raise
these to the same high rank, uniting the family in one,-to my lasting
bliss. Thou, indeed, hast no need of more children, but me it profits
to help my present family by that which is to be. Have I miscarried
here? Not even thou wouldest say so unless a rival's charms rankled
in thy bosom. No, but you women have such strange ideas, that you
think all is well so long as your married life runs smooth; but if
some mischance occur to ruffle your love, all that was good and lovely
erst you reckon as your foes. Yea, men should have begotten children
from some other source, no female race existing; thus would no evil
ever have fallen on mankind.
LEADER This speech, O Jason, hast thou with specious art arranged;
but yet I think-albeit in speaking I am indiscreet-that thou hast
sinned in thy betrayal of thy wife.
MEDEA No doubt I differ from the mass of men on many points; for,
to my mind, whoso hath skill to fence with words in an unjust cause,
incurs the heaviest penalty; for such as one, confident that he can
cast a decent veil of words o'er his injustice, dares to practise
it; and yet he is not so very clever after all. So do not thou put
forth thy specious pleas and clever words to me now, for one word
of mine will lay thee low. Hadst thou not had a villain's heart, thou
shouldst have gained my consent, then made this match, instead of
hiding it from those who loved thee.
JASON Thou wouldest have lent me ready aid, no doubt, in this proposal,
if had told thee of my marriage, seeing that not even now canst thou
restrain thy soul's hot fury.
MEDEA This was not what restrained thee; but thine eye was turned
towards old age, and a foreign wife began to appear a shame to thee.
JASON Be well assured of this: 'twas not for the woman's sake I wedded
the king's daughter, my present wife; but, as I have already told
thee, I wished to insure thy safety and to be the father of royal
sons bound by blood to my own children-a bulwark to our house.
MEDEA May that prosperity, whose end is woe, ne'er be mine, nor such
wealth as would ever sting my heart!
JASON Change that prayer as I will teach thee, and thou wilt show
more wisdom. Never let happiness appear in sorrow's guise, nor, when
thy fortune smiles, pretend she frowns!
MEDEA Mock on; thou hast a place of refuge; I am alone, an exile
soon to be.
JASON Thy own free choice was this; blame no one else.
MEDEA What did I do? Marry, then betray thee?
JASON Against the king thou didst invoke an impious curse.
MEDEA On thy house too maybe I bring the curse.
JASON Know this, I will no further dispute this point with thee.
But, if thou wilt of my fortune somewhat take for the children or
thyself to help thy exile, say on; for I am ready to grant it with
ungrudging hand, yea and to bend tokens to my friends elsewhere who
shall treat thee well. If thou refuse this offer, thou wilt do a foolish
deed, but if thou cease from anger the greater will be thy gain.
MEDEA I will have naught to do with friends of thine, naught will
I receive of thee, offer it not to me; a villain's gifts can bring
no blessing.
JASON At least I call the gods to witness, that I am ready in all
things to serve thee and thy children, but thou dost scorn my favours
and thrustest thy friends stubbornly away; wherefore thy lot will
be more bitter still.
MEDEA Away! By love for thy young bride entrapped, too long thou
lingerest outside her chamber; go wed, for, if God will, thou shalt
have such a marriage as thou wouldst fain refuse. (JASON goes out.)
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
This passage continues next episode, where Medea meets with Aegeus, the father of Theseus.
Jason (Part 3), from Euripides' Medea.
Previously, Medea was left by Jason for the daughter of Creon, and was then banished into exile. In this passage, Jason gives Medea his reasonings, but she wants no help from him.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
Jason (Part 3),
a Legendary Passage,
from Euripides' Medea,
trans. by E. P. Coleridge
CHORUS (singing, strophe 1)
Back to their source the holy rivers turn their tide. Order and the
universe are being reversed. 'Tis men whose counsels are treacherous,
whose oath by heaven is no longer sure. Rumour shall bring a change
o'er my life, bringing it into good repute. Honour's dawn is breaking
for woman's sex; no more shall the foul tongue of slander fix upon
us.
(antistrophe 1)
The songs of the poets of old shall cease to make our faithlessness
their theme. Phoebus, lord of minstrelsy, hath not implanted in our
mind the gift of heavenly song, else had I sung an answering strain
to the race of males, for time's long chapter affords many a theme
on their sex as well as ours.
(strophe 2)
With mind distraught didst thou thy father's house desert on thy
voyage betwixt ocean's twin rocks, and on a foreign strand thou dwellest
thy bed left husbandless, poor lady, and thou an exile from the land,
dishonoured, persecuted.
(antistrophe 2)
Gone is the grace that oaths once had. Through all the breadth of
Hellas honour is found no more; to heaven hath it sped away. For thee
no father's house is open, woe is thee! to be a haven from the troublous
storm, while o'er thy home is set another queen, the bride that is
preferred to thee. (As the CHORUS finishes its song, JASON enters,
alone. MEDEA comes out of the house.)
JASON It is not now I first remark, but oft ere this, how unruly
a pest is a harsh temper. For instance, thou, hadst thou but patiently
endured the will of thy superiors, mightest have remained here in
this land and house, but now for thy idle words wilt thou be banished.
Thy words are naught to me. Cease not to call Jason basest of men;
but for those words thou hast spoken against our rulers, count it
all gain that exile is thy only punishment. I ever tried to check
the outbursts of the angry monarch, and would have had thee stay,
but thou wouldst not forego thy silly rage, always reviling our rulers,
and so thou wilt be banished. Yet even after all this I weary not
of my goodwill, but am come with thus much forethought, lady, that
thou mayst not be destitute nor want for aught, when, with thy sons,
thou art cast out. Many an evil doth exile bring in its train with
it; for even though thou hatest me, never will I harbour hard thoughts
of thee.
MEDEA Thou craven villain (for that is the only name my tongue can
find for thee, a foul reproach on thy unmanliness), comest thou to
me, thou, most hated foe of gods, of me, and of all mankind? 'Tis
no proof of courage or hardihood to confront thy friends after injuring
them, but that worst of all human diseases-loss of shame. Yet hast
thou done well to come; for I shall ease my soul by reviling thee,
and thou wilt be vexed at my recital. I will begin at the very beginning.
I saved thy life, as every Hellene knows who sailed with thee aboard
the good ship Argo, when thou wert sent to tame and yoke fire-breathing
bulls, and to sow the deadly tilth. Yea, and I slew the dragon which
guarded the golden fleece, keeping sleepless watch o'er it with many
a wreathed coil, and I raised for thee a beacon of deliverance. Father
and home of my free will I left and came with thee to Iolcos, 'neath
Pelion's hills, for my love was stronger than my prudence. Next I
caused the death of Pelias by a doom most grievous, even by his own
children's hand, beguiling them of all their fear. All this have I
done for thee, thou traitor! and thou hast cast me over, taking to
thyself another wife, though children have been born to us. Hadst
thou been childless still, I could have pardoned thy desire for this
new union. Gone is now the trust I put in oaths. I cannot even understand
whether thou thinkest that the gods of old no longer rule, or that
fresh decrees are now in vogue amongst mankind, for thy conscience
must tell thee thou hast not kept faith with me. Ah! poor right hand,
which thou didst often grasp. These knees thou didst embrace! All
in vain, I suffered a traitor to touch me! How short of my hopes I
am fallen! But come, I will deal with thee as though thou wert my friend.
Yet what kindness can I expect from one so base as thee? But yet I
will do it, for my questioning will show thee yet more base. Whither
can I turn me now? to my father's house, to my own country, which
I for thee deserted to come hither? to the hapless daughters of Pelias?
A glad welcome, I trow, would they give me in their home, whose father's
death I compassed! My case stands even thus: I am become the bitter
foe to those of mine own home, and those whom I need ne'er have wronged
I have made mine enemies to pleasure thee. Wherefore to reward me
for this thou hast made me doubly blest in the eyes of many wife in
Hellas; and in thee I own a peerless, trusty lord. O woe is me, if
indeed I am to be cast forth an exile from the land, without one friend;
one lone woman with her babes forlorn! Yea, a fine reproach to thee
in thy bridal hour, that thy children and the wife who saved thy life
are beggars and vagabonds! O Zeus! why hast thou granted unto man
clear signs to know the shame in gold, while on man's brow no brand
is stamped whereby to gauge the villain's heart?
LEADER OF THE CHORUS There is a something terrible and past all cure,
when quarrels arise 'twixt those who are near and dear.
JASON Needs must I now, it seems, turn orator, and, like a good helmsman
on a ship with close-reefed sails, weather that wearisome tongue of
thine. Now, I believe, since thou wilt exaggerate thy favours, that
to Cypri, alone of gods or men I owe the safety of my voyage. Thou
hast a subtle wit enough; yet were it a hateful thing for me to say
that the Love-god constrained thee by his resistless shaft to save
my life. However, I will not reckon this too nicely; 'twas kindly
done, however thou didst serve me. Yet for my safety hast thou received
more than ever thou gavest, as I will show. First, thou dwellest in
Hellas, instead of thy barbarian land, and hast learnt what justice
means and how to live by law, not by the dictates of brute force;
and all the Hellenes recognize thy cleverness, and thou hast gained
a name; whereas, if thou hadst dwelt upon the confines of the earth,
no tongue had mentioned thee. Give me no gold within my halls, nor
skill to sing a fairer strain than ever Orpheus sang, unless there-with
my fame be spread abroad! So much I say to thee about my own toils,
for 'twas thou didst challenge me to this retort. As for the taunts
thou urgest against my marriage with the princess, I will prove to
thee, first, that I am prudent herein, next chastened in my love,
and last powerful friend to thee and to thy sons; only hold thy peace.
Since I have here withdrawn from Iolcos with many a hopeless trouble
at my back, what happier device could I, an exile, frame than marriage
with the daughter of the king? 'Tis not because I loathe thee for
my wife-the thought that rankles in thy heart; 'tis not because I
am smitten with desire for a new bride, nor yet that I am eager to
vie with others in begetting many children, for those we have are
quite enough, and I do not complain. Nay, 'tis that we-and this is
most important-may dwell in comfort, instead of suffering want (for
well I know that every whilom friend avoids the poor), and that
I might rear my sons as doth befit my house; further, that I might
be the father of brothers for the children thou hast borne, and raise
these to the same high rank, uniting the family in one,-to my lasting
bliss. Thou, indeed, hast no need of more children, but me it profits
to help my present family by that which is to be. Have I miscarried
here? Not even thou wouldest say so unless a rival's charms rankled
in thy bosom. No, but you women have such strange ideas, that you
think all is well so long as your married life runs smooth; but if
some mischance occur to ruffle your love, all that was good and lovely
erst you reckon as your foes. Yea, men should have begotten children
from some other source, no female race existing; thus would no evil
ever have fallen on mankind.
LEADER This speech, O Jason, hast thou with specious art arranged;
but yet I think-albeit in speaking I am indiscreet-that thou hast
sinned in thy betrayal of thy wife.
MEDEA No doubt I differ from the mass of men on many points; for,
to my mind, whoso hath skill to fence with words in an unjust cause,
incurs the heaviest penalty; for such as one, confident that he can
cast a decent veil of words o'er his injustice, dares to practise
it; and yet he is not so very clever after all. So do not thou put
forth thy specious pleas and clever words to me now, for one word
of mine will lay thee low. Hadst thou not had a villain's heart, thou
shouldst have gained my consent, then made this match, instead of
hiding it from those who loved thee.
JASON Thou wouldest have lent me ready aid, no doubt, in this proposal,
if had told thee of my marriage, seeing that not even now canst thou
restrain thy soul's hot fury.
MEDEA This was not what restrained thee; but thine eye was turned
towards old age, and a foreign wife began to appear a shame to thee.
JASON Be well assured of this: 'twas not for the woman's sake I wedded
the king's daughter, my present wife; but, as I have already told
thee, I wished to insure thy safety and to be the father of royal
sons bound by blood to my own children-a bulwark to our house.
MEDEA May that prosperity, whose end is woe, ne'er be mine, nor such
wealth as would ever sting my heart!
JASON Change that prayer as I will teach thee, and thou wilt show
more wisdom. Never let happiness appear in sorrow's guise, nor, when
thy fortune smiles, pretend she frowns!
MEDEA Mock on; thou hast a place of refuge; I am alone, an exile
soon to be.
JASON Thy own free choice was this; blame no one else.
MEDEA What did I do? Marry, then betray thee?
JASON Against the king thou didst invoke an impious curse.
MEDEA On thy house too maybe I bring the curse.
JASON Know this, I will no further dispute this point with thee.
But, if thou wilt of my fortune somewhat take for the children or
thyself to help thy exile, say on; for I am ready to grant it with
ungrudging hand, yea and to bend tokens to my friends elsewhere who
shall treat thee well. If thou refuse this offer, thou wilt do a foolish
deed, but if thou cease from anger the greater will be thy gain.
MEDEA I will have naught to do with friends of thine, naught will
I receive of thee, offer it not to me; a villain's gifts can bring
no blessing.
JASON At least I call the gods to witness, that I am ready in all
things to serve thee and thy children, but thou dost scorn my favours
and thrustest thy friends stubbornly away; wherefore thy lot will
be more bitter still.
MEDEA Away! By love for thy young bride entrapped, too long thou
lingerest outside her chamber; go wed, for, if God will, thou shalt
have such a marriage as thou wouldst fain refuse. (JASON goes out.)
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
This passage continues next episode, where Medea meets with Aegeus, the father of Theseus.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
LP0091 -XVII ARGONAUTS- Creon (Part 2) of Euripides' Medea
Legendary Passages #0091 -XVII ARGONAUTS-
Creon (Part 2), from Euripides' Medea.
Previously, Jason left Medea for the daughter of Creon.
In this passage, Medea is confronted by Creon who banishes her family from Corinth. She talks Creon into giving her one more day, and plots to kill him, his daughter, and Jason too.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
Creon (Part 2),
a Legendary Passage,
from Euripides' Medea,
trans. by E. P. Coleridge.
(As the CHORUS finishes its song, MEDEA enters from the house.)
MEDEA From the house I have come forth, Corinthian ladies, for fear
lest you be blaming me; for well I know that amongst men many by showing
pride have gotten them an ill name and a reputation for indifference,
both those who shun men's gaze and those who move amid the stranger
crowd, and likewise they who choose a quiet walk in life. For there
is no just discernment in the eyes of men, for they, or ever they
have surely learnt their neighbour's heart, loathe him at first sight,
though never wronged by him; and so a stranger most of all should
adopt a city's views; nor do I commend that citizen, who, in the stubbornness
of his heart, from churlishness resents the city's will.
But on me hath fallen this unforeseen disaster, and sapped my life;
ruined I am, and long to resign the boon of existence, kind friends,
and die. For he who was all the world to me, as well thou knowest,
hath turned out the worst of men, my own husband. Of all things that
have life and sense we women are the most hapless creatures; first
must we buy a husband at a great price, and o'er ourselves a tyrant
set which is an evil worse than the first; and herein lies the most
important issue, whether our choice be good or bad. For divorce is
not honourable to women, nor can we disown our lords. Next must the
wife, coming as she does to ways and customs new, since she hath not
learnt the lesson in her home, have a diviner's eye to see how best
to treat the partner of her life. If haply we perform these tasks
with thoroughness and tact, and the husband live with us, without
resenting the yoke, our life is a happy one; if not, 'twere best to
die. But when a man is vexed with what he finds indoors, he goeth
forth and rids his soul of its disgust, betaking him to some friend
or comrade of like age; whilst we must needs regard his single self.
And yet they say we live secure at home, while they are at the wars,
with their sorry reasoning, for I would gladly take my stand in battle
array three times o'er, than once give birth. But enough! this language
suits not thee as it does me; thou hast a city here, a father's house,
some joy in life, and friends to share thy thoughts, but I am destitute,
without a city, and therefore scorned by my husband, a captive I from
a foreign shore, with no mother, brother, or kinsman in whom to find
a new haven of refuge from this calamity. Wherefore this one boon
and only this I wish to win from thee,-thy silence, if haply I can
some way or means devise to avenge me on my husband for this cruel
treatment, and on the man who gave to him his daughter, and on her
who is his wife. For though woman be timorous enough in all else,
and as regards courage, a coward at the mere sight of steel, yet in
the moment she finds her honour wronged, no heart is filled with deadlier
thoughts than hers.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS This will I do; for thou wilt be taking a just
vengeance on thy husband, Medea. That thou shouldst mourn thy lot
surprises me not. But lo! I see Creon, king of this land coming hither,
to announce some new resolve. (CREON enters, with his retinue.)
CREON Hark thee, Medea, I bid thee take those sullen looks and angry
thoughts against thy husband forth from this land in exile, and with
thee take both thy children and that without delay, for I am judge
in this sentence, and I will not return unto my house till I banish
thee beyond the borders of the land.
MEDEA Ah, me! now is utter destruction come upon me, unhappy that
I am! For my enemies are bearing down on me full sail, nor have I
any landing-place to come at in my trouble. Yet for all my wretched
plight I will ask thee, Creon, wherefore dost thou drive me from the
land?
CREON I fear thee,-no longer need I veil my dread 'neath words,-lest
thou devise against my child some cureless ill. Many things contribute
to this fear of mine; thou art a witch by nature, expert in countless
sorceries, and thou art chafing for the loss of thy husband's affection.
I hear, too, so they tell me, that thou dost threaten the father of
the bride, her husband, and herself with some mischief; wherefore
I will take precautions ere our troubles come. For 'tis better for
me to incur thy hatred now, lady, than to soften my heart and bitterly
repent it hereafter.
MEDEA Alas! this is not now the first time, but oft before, O Creon,
hath my reputation injured me and caused sore mischief. Wherefore
whoso is wise in his generation ought never to have his children taught
to be too clever; for besides the reputation they get for idleness,
they purchase bitter odium from the citizens. For if thou shouldst
import new learning amongst dullards, thou wilt be thought a useless
trifler, void of knowledge; while if thy fame in the city o'ertops
that of the pretenders to cunning knowledge, thou wilt win their dislike.
I too myself share in this ill-luck. Some think me clever and hate
me, others say I am too reserved, and some the very reverse; others
find me hard to please and not so very clever after all. Be that as
it may, thou dost fear me lest I bring on thee something to mar thy
harmony. Fear me not, Creon, my position scarce is such that should
seek to quarrel with princes. Why should I, for how hast thou injured
me? Thou hast betrothed thy daughter where thy fancy prompted thee.
No, 'tis my husband I hate, though I doubt not thou hast acted wisely
herein. And now I grudge not thy prosperity; betroth thy child, good
luck to thee, but let me abide in this land, for though I have been
wronged I will be still and yield to my superiors.
CREON Thy words are soft to hear, but much I dread lest thou art
devising some mischief in thy heart, and less than ever do I trust
thee now; for cunning woman, and man likewise, is easier to guard
against when quick-tempered than when taciturn. Nay, begone at once!
speak me no speeches, for this is decreed, nor hast thou any art whereby
thou shalt abide amongst us, since thou hatest me.
MEDEA O, say not so! by thy knees and by thy daughter newlywed, I
do implore!
CREON Thou wastest words; thou wilt never persuade me.
MEDEA What, wilt thou banish me, and to my prayers no pity yield?
CREON I will, for I love not thee above my own family.
MEDEA O my country! what fond memories I have of thee in this hour!
CREON Yea, for I myself love my city best of all things save my children.
MEDEA Ah me! ah me! to mortal man how dread a scourge is love!
CREON That, I deem, is according to the turn our fortunes take.
MEDEA O Zeus! let not the author of these my troubles escape thee.
CREON Begone, thou silly woman, and free me from my toil.
MEDEA The toil is mine, no lack of it.
CREON Soon wilt thou be thrust out forcibly by the hand of servants.
MEDEA Not that, not that, I do entreat thee, Creon.
CREON Thou wilt cause disturbance yet, it seems.
MEDEA I will begone; I ask thee not this boon to grant.
CREON Why then this violence? why dost thou not depart?
MEDEA Suffer me to abide this single day and devise some plan for
the manner of my exile, and means of living for my children, since
their father cares not to provide his babes therewith. Then pity them;
thou too hast children of thine own; thou needs must have a kindly
heart. For my own lot I care naught, though I an exile am, but for
those babes I weep, that they should learn what sorrow means.
CREON Mine is a nature anything but harsh; full oft by showing pity
have suffered shipwreck; and now albeit I clearly see my error, yet
shalt thou gain this request, lady; but I do forewarn thee, if tomorrow's
rising sun shall find thee and thy children within the borders of
this land, thou diest; my word is spoken and it will not lie. So now,
if abide thou must, stay this one day only, for in it thou canst not
do any of the fearful deeds I dread. (CREON and his retinue go out.)
CHORUS (chanting) Ah! poor lady, woe is thee! Alas, for thy sorrows!
Whither wilt thou turn? What protection, what home or country to save
thee from thy troubles wilt thou find? O Medea, in what a hopeless
sea of misery heaven hath plunged thee!
MEDEA On all sides sorrow pens me in. Who shall gainsay this? But
all is not yet lost! think not so. Still are there troubles in store
for the new bride, and for her bridegroom no light toil. Dost think
I would ever have fawned on yonder man, unless to gain some end or
form some scheme? Nay, would not so much as have spoken to him or
touched him with my hand. But he has in folly so far stepped in that,
though he might have checked my plot by banishing me from the land,
he hath allowed me to abide this day, in which I will lay low in death
three of my enemies-a father and his daughter and my husband too.
Now, though I have many ways to compass their death, I am not sure,
friends, which I am to try first. Shall I set fire to the bridal mansion,
or plunge the whetted sword through their hearts, softly stealing
into the chamber where their couch is spread? One thing stands in
my way. If I am caught making my way into the chamber, intent on my
design, I shall be put to death and cause my foes to mock, 'Twere
best to take the shortest way-the way we women are most skilled in-by
poison to destroy them. Well, suppose them dead; what city will receive
me? What friendly host will give me a shelter in his land, a home
secure, and save my soul alive? None. So I will wait yet a little
while in case some tower of defence rise up for me; then will I proceed
to this bloody deed in crafty silence; but if some unexpected mischance
drive me forth, I will with mine own hand seize the sword, e'en though
I die for it, and slay them, and go forth on my bold path of daring.
By that dread queen whom I revere before all others and have chosen
to share my task, by Hecate who dwells within my inmost chamber, not
one of them shall wound my heart and rue it not. Bitter and sad will
I make their marriage for them; bitter shall be the wooing of it,
bitter my exile from the land. Up, then, Medea, spare not the secrets
of thy art in plotting and devising; on to the danger. Now comes a
struggle needing courage. Dost see what thou art suffering? 'Tis not
for thee to be a laughing-stock to the race of Sisyphus by reason
of this wedding of Jason, sprung, as thou art, from noble sire, and
of the Sun-god's race. Thou hast cunning; and, more than this, we
women, though by nature little apt for virtuous deeds, are most expert
to fashion any mischief.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
This passage continues on to next episode, where Medea is confronted by her former husband, Jason.
Creon (Part 2), from Euripides' Medea.
Previously, Jason left Medea for the daughter of Creon.
In this passage, Medea is confronted by Creon who banishes her family from Corinth. She talks Creon into giving her one more day, and plots to kill him, his daughter, and Jason too.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
Creon (Part 2),
a Legendary Passage,
from Euripides' Medea,
trans. by E. P. Coleridge.
(As the CHORUS finishes its song, MEDEA enters from the house.)
MEDEA From the house I have come forth, Corinthian ladies, for fear
lest you be blaming me; for well I know that amongst men many by showing
pride have gotten them an ill name and a reputation for indifference,
both those who shun men's gaze and those who move amid the stranger
crowd, and likewise they who choose a quiet walk in life. For there
is no just discernment in the eyes of men, for they, or ever they
have surely learnt their neighbour's heart, loathe him at first sight,
though never wronged by him; and so a stranger most of all should
adopt a city's views; nor do I commend that citizen, who, in the stubbornness
of his heart, from churlishness resents the city's will.
But on me hath fallen this unforeseen disaster, and sapped my life;
ruined I am, and long to resign the boon of existence, kind friends,
and die. For he who was all the world to me, as well thou knowest,
hath turned out the worst of men, my own husband. Of all things that
have life and sense we women are the most hapless creatures; first
must we buy a husband at a great price, and o'er ourselves a tyrant
set which is an evil worse than the first; and herein lies the most
important issue, whether our choice be good or bad. For divorce is
not honourable to women, nor can we disown our lords. Next must the
wife, coming as she does to ways and customs new, since she hath not
learnt the lesson in her home, have a diviner's eye to see how best
to treat the partner of her life. If haply we perform these tasks
with thoroughness and tact, and the husband live with us, without
resenting the yoke, our life is a happy one; if not, 'twere best to
die. But when a man is vexed with what he finds indoors, he goeth
forth and rids his soul of its disgust, betaking him to some friend
or comrade of like age; whilst we must needs regard his single self.
And yet they say we live secure at home, while they are at the wars,
with their sorry reasoning, for I would gladly take my stand in battle
array three times o'er, than once give birth. But enough! this language
suits not thee as it does me; thou hast a city here, a father's house,
some joy in life, and friends to share thy thoughts, but I am destitute,
without a city, and therefore scorned by my husband, a captive I from
a foreign shore, with no mother, brother, or kinsman in whom to find
a new haven of refuge from this calamity. Wherefore this one boon
and only this I wish to win from thee,-thy silence, if haply I can
some way or means devise to avenge me on my husband for this cruel
treatment, and on the man who gave to him his daughter, and on her
who is his wife. For though woman be timorous enough in all else,
and as regards courage, a coward at the mere sight of steel, yet in
the moment she finds her honour wronged, no heart is filled with deadlier
thoughts than hers.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS This will I do; for thou wilt be taking a just
vengeance on thy husband, Medea. That thou shouldst mourn thy lot
surprises me not. But lo! I see Creon, king of this land coming hither,
to announce some new resolve. (CREON enters, with his retinue.)
CREON Hark thee, Medea, I bid thee take those sullen looks and angry
thoughts against thy husband forth from this land in exile, and with
thee take both thy children and that without delay, for I am judge
in this sentence, and I will not return unto my house till I banish
thee beyond the borders of the land.
MEDEA Ah, me! now is utter destruction come upon me, unhappy that
I am! For my enemies are bearing down on me full sail, nor have I
any landing-place to come at in my trouble. Yet for all my wretched
plight I will ask thee, Creon, wherefore dost thou drive me from the
land?
CREON I fear thee,-no longer need I veil my dread 'neath words,-lest
thou devise against my child some cureless ill. Many things contribute
to this fear of mine; thou art a witch by nature, expert in countless
sorceries, and thou art chafing for the loss of thy husband's affection.
I hear, too, so they tell me, that thou dost threaten the father of
the bride, her husband, and herself with some mischief; wherefore
I will take precautions ere our troubles come. For 'tis better for
me to incur thy hatred now, lady, than to soften my heart and bitterly
repent it hereafter.
MEDEA Alas! this is not now the first time, but oft before, O Creon,
hath my reputation injured me and caused sore mischief. Wherefore
whoso is wise in his generation ought never to have his children taught
to be too clever; for besides the reputation they get for idleness,
they purchase bitter odium from the citizens. For if thou shouldst
import new learning amongst dullards, thou wilt be thought a useless
trifler, void of knowledge; while if thy fame in the city o'ertops
that of the pretenders to cunning knowledge, thou wilt win their dislike.
I too myself share in this ill-luck. Some think me clever and hate
me, others say I am too reserved, and some the very reverse; others
find me hard to please and not so very clever after all. Be that as
it may, thou dost fear me lest I bring on thee something to mar thy
harmony. Fear me not, Creon, my position scarce is such that should
seek to quarrel with princes. Why should I, for how hast thou injured
me? Thou hast betrothed thy daughter where thy fancy prompted thee.
No, 'tis my husband I hate, though I doubt not thou hast acted wisely
herein. And now I grudge not thy prosperity; betroth thy child, good
luck to thee, but let me abide in this land, for though I have been
wronged I will be still and yield to my superiors.
CREON Thy words are soft to hear, but much I dread lest thou art
devising some mischief in thy heart, and less than ever do I trust
thee now; for cunning woman, and man likewise, is easier to guard
against when quick-tempered than when taciturn. Nay, begone at once!
speak me no speeches, for this is decreed, nor hast thou any art whereby
thou shalt abide amongst us, since thou hatest me.
MEDEA O, say not so! by thy knees and by thy daughter newlywed, I
do implore!
CREON Thou wastest words; thou wilt never persuade me.
MEDEA What, wilt thou banish me, and to my prayers no pity yield?
CREON I will, for I love not thee above my own family.
MEDEA O my country! what fond memories I have of thee in this hour!
CREON Yea, for I myself love my city best of all things save my children.
MEDEA Ah me! ah me! to mortal man how dread a scourge is love!
CREON That, I deem, is according to the turn our fortunes take.
MEDEA O Zeus! let not the author of these my troubles escape thee.
CREON Begone, thou silly woman, and free me from my toil.
MEDEA The toil is mine, no lack of it.
CREON Soon wilt thou be thrust out forcibly by the hand of servants.
MEDEA Not that, not that, I do entreat thee, Creon.
CREON Thou wilt cause disturbance yet, it seems.
MEDEA I will begone; I ask thee not this boon to grant.
CREON Why then this violence? why dost thou not depart?
MEDEA Suffer me to abide this single day and devise some plan for
the manner of my exile, and means of living for my children, since
their father cares not to provide his babes therewith. Then pity them;
thou too hast children of thine own; thou needs must have a kindly
heart. For my own lot I care naught, though I an exile am, but for
those babes I weep, that they should learn what sorrow means.
CREON Mine is a nature anything but harsh; full oft by showing pity
have suffered shipwreck; and now albeit I clearly see my error, yet
shalt thou gain this request, lady; but I do forewarn thee, if tomorrow's
rising sun shall find thee and thy children within the borders of
this land, thou diest; my word is spoken and it will not lie. So now,
if abide thou must, stay this one day only, for in it thou canst not
do any of the fearful deeds I dread. (CREON and his retinue go out.)
CHORUS (chanting) Ah! poor lady, woe is thee! Alas, for thy sorrows!
Whither wilt thou turn? What protection, what home or country to save
thee from thy troubles wilt thou find? O Medea, in what a hopeless
sea of misery heaven hath plunged thee!
MEDEA On all sides sorrow pens me in. Who shall gainsay this? But
all is not yet lost! think not so. Still are there troubles in store
for the new bride, and for her bridegroom no light toil. Dost think
I would ever have fawned on yonder man, unless to gain some end or
form some scheme? Nay, would not so much as have spoken to him or
touched him with my hand. But he has in folly so far stepped in that,
though he might have checked my plot by banishing me from the land,
he hath allowed me to abide this day, in which I will lay low in death
three of my enemies-a father and his daughter and my husband too.
Now, though I have many ways to compass their death, I am not sure,
friends, which I am to try first. Shall I set fire to the bridal mansion,
or plunge the whetted sword through their hearts, softly stealing
into the chamber where their couch is spread? One thing stands in
my way. If I am caught making my way into the chamber, intent on my
design, I shall be put to death and cause my foes to mock, 'Twere
best to take the shortest way-the way we women are most skilled in-by
poison to destroy them. Well, suppose them dead; what city will receive
me? What friendly host will give me a shelter in his land, a home
secure, and save my soul alive? None. So I will wait yet a little
while in case some tower of defence rise up for me; then will I proceed
to this bloody deed in crafty silence; but if some unexpected mischance
drive me forth, I will with mine own hand seize the sword, e'en though
I die for it, and slay them, and go forth on my bold path of daring.
By that dread queen whom I revere before all others and have chosen
to share my task, by Hecate who dwells within my inmost chamber, not
one of them shall wound my heart and rue it not. Bitter and sad will
I make their marriage for them; bitter shall be the wooing of it,
bitter my exile from the land. Up, then, Medea, spare not the secrets
of thy art in plotting and devising; on to the danger. Now comes a
struggle needing courage. Dost see what thou art suffering? 'Tis not
for thee to be a laughing-stock to the race of Sisyphus by reason
of this wedding of Jason, sprung, as thou art, from noble sire, and
of the Sun-god's race. Thou hast cunning; and, more than this, we
women, though by nature little apt for virtuous deeds, are most expert
to fashion any mischief.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
This passage continues on to next episode, where Medea is confronted by her former husband, Jason.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
LP0090 -XVI ARGONAUTS- The Nurse (Part 1) of Euripides' Medea
Legendary Passages #0090 -XVI ARGONAUTS-
The Nurse (Part 1) of Euripides' Medea.
Unlike previous episodes, the next seven are actually a play, performed by myself, and by my sister Aly playing as Medea. In this passage, Jason has decided to leave her and wed the daughter of Creon, and worse, Medea's family is to be driven from the city.
Two servants, an Attendant watching the children and an old nurse, discuss the recent marital woes, while off stage Medea cries in lamentation. After the Attendant leaves, both the nurse and the chorus worry what sort of revenge awaits Jason and his bride.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
The Nurse (Part 1),
a Legendary Passage,
from Euripides' Medea,
trans. by E. P. Coleridge.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Before MEDEA's house in Corinth, near the palace Of CREON. The NURSE
enters from the house.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NURSE Ah! Would to Heaven the good ship Argo ne'er had sped its
course to the Colchian land through the misty blue Symplegades, nor
ever in the glens of Pelion the pine been felled to furnish with oars
the chieftain's hands, who went to fetch the golden fleece for Pelias;
for then would my own mistress Medea never have sailed to the turrets
of Iolcos, her soul with love for Jason smitten, nor would she have
beguiled the daughters of Pelias to slay their father and come to
live here in the land of Corinth with her husband and children, where
her exile found favour with the citizens to whose land she had come,
and in all things of her own accord was she at one with Jason, the
greatest safeguard this when wife and husband do agree; but now their
love is all turned to hate, and tenderest ties are weak. For Jason
hath betrayed his own children and my mistress dear for the love of
a royal bride, for he hath wedded the daughter of Creon, lord of this
land. While Medea, his hapless wife, thus scorned, appeals to the
oaths he swore, recalls the strong pledge his right hand gave, and
bids heaven be witness what requital she is finding from Jason. And
here she lies fasting, yielding her body to her grief, wasting away
in tears ever since she learnt that she was wronged by her husband,
never lifting her eye nor raising her face from off the ground; and
she lends as deaf an ear to her friend's warning as if she were a
rock or ocean billow, save when she turns her snow-white neck aside
and softly to herself bemoans her father dear, her country and her
home, which she gave up to come hither with the man who now holds
her in dishonour. She, poor lady, hath by sad experience learnt how
good a thing it is never to quit one's native land. And she hates
her children now and feels no joy at seeing them; I fear she may contrive
some untoward scheme; for her mood is dangerous nor will she brook
her cruel treatment; full well I know her, and I much do dread that
she will plunge the keen sword through their hearts, stealing without
a word into the chamber where their marriage couch is spread, or else
that she will slay the prince and bridegroom too, and so find some
calamity still more grievous than the present; for dreadful is her
wrath; verily the man that doth incur her hate will have no easy task
to raise o'er her a song of triumph. Lo! where her sons come hither
from their childish sports; little they reck of their mother's woes,
for the soul of the young is no friend to sorrow. (The ATTENDANT
leads in MEDEA'S children.)
ATTENDANT Why dost thou, so long my lady's own handmaid, stand here
at the gate alone, loudly lamenting to thyself the piteous tale? how
comes it that Medea will have thee leave her to herself?
NURSE Old man, attendant on the sons of Jason, our masters' fortunes
when they go awry make good slaves grieve and touch their hearts.
Oh! have come to such a pitch of grief that there stole a yearning
wish upon me to come forth hither and proclaim to heaven and earth
my mistress's hard fate.
ATTENDANT What! has not the poor lady ceased yet from her lamentation?
NURSE Would I were as thou art! the mischief is but now beginning;
it has not reached its climax yet.
ATTENDANT O foolish one, if I may call my mistress such a name; how
little she recks of evils yet more recent!
NURSE What mean'st, old man? grudge not to tell me.
ATTENDANT 'Tis naught; I do repent me even of the words I have spoken.
NURSE Nay, by thy beard I conjure thee, hide it not from thy fellow-slave; will be silent, if need be, on that text.
ATTENDANT I heard one say, pretending not to listen as I approached
the place where our greybeards sit playing draughts near Pirene's
sacred spring, that Creon, the ruler of this land, is bent on driving
these children and their mother from the boundaries of Corinth; but
I know not whether the news is to be relied upon, and would fain it
were not.
NURSE What! will Jason brook such treatment of his sons, even though
he be at variance with their mother?
ATTENDANT Old ties give way to new; he bears no longer any love to
this family.
NURSE Undone, it seems, are we, if to old woes fresh ones we add,
ere we have drained the former to the dregs.
ATTENDANT Hold thou thy peace, say not a word of this; 'tis no time
for our mistress to learn hereof.
NURSE O children, do ye hear how your father feels towards you? Perdition
catch him, but no he is my master still; yet is he proved a very traitor
to his nearest and dearest.
ATTENDANT And who 'mongst men is not? Art learning only now, that
every single man cares for himself more than for his neighbour, some
from honest motives, others for mere gain's sake? seeing that to indulge
his passion their father has ceased to love these children.
NURSE Go, children, within the house; all will be well. Do thou keep
them as far away as may be, and bring them not near their mother in
her evil hour. For ere this have I seen her eyeing them savagely,
as though she were minded to do them some hurt, and well I know she
will not cease from her fury till she have pounced on some victim.
At least may she turn her hand against her foes, and not against her
friends.
MEDEA (chanting within) Ah, me! a wretched suffering woman I! O
would that I could die!
NURSE (chanting) 'Tis as I said, my dear children; wild fancies
stir your mother's heart, wild fury goads her on. Into the house without
delay, come not near her eye, approach her not, beware her savage
mood, the fell tempest of her reckless heart. In, in with what speed
ye may. For 'tis plain she will soon redouble her fury; that cry is
but the herald of the gathering storm-cloud whose lightning soon will
flash; what will her proud restless soul, in the anguish of despair,
be guilty of? (The ATTENDANT takes the children into the house.)
MEDEA(chanting within) Ah, me! the agony I have suffered, deep enough
to call for these laments! Curse you and your father too, ye children
damned, sons of a doomed mother! Ruin seize the whole family!
NURSE (chanting) Ah me! ah me! the pity of it! Why, pray, do thy
children share their father's crime? Why hatest thou them? Woe is
you, poor children, how do I grieve for you lest ye suffer some outrage!
Strange are the tempers of princes, and maybe because they seldom
have to obey, and mostly lord it over others, change they their moods
with difficulty. 'Tis better then to have been trained to live on
equal terms. Be it mine to reach old age, not in proud pomp, but in
security! Moderation wins the day first as a better word for men to
use, and likewise it is far the best course for them to pursue; but
greatness that doth o'erreach itself, brings no blessing to mortal
men; but pays a penalty of greater ruin whenever fortune is wroth
with a family. (The CHORUS enters. The following lines between the
NURSE, CHORUS, and MEDEA are sung.)
CHORUS I heard the voice, uplifted loud, of our poor Colchian lady,
nor yet is she quiet; speak, aged dame, for as I stood by the house
with double gates I heard a voice of weeping from within, and I do
grieve, lady, for the sorrows of this house, for it hath won my love.
NURSE 'Tis a house no more; all that is passed away long since; a
royal bride keeps Jason at her side, while our mistress pines away
in her bower, finding no comfort for her soul in aught her friends
can say.
MEDEA (within) Oh, oh! Would that Heaven's levin bolt would cleave
this head in twain! What gain is life to me? Woe, woe is me! O, to
die and win release, quitting this loathed existence!
CHORUS Didst hear, O Zeus, thou earth, and thou, O light, the piteous
note of woe the hapless wife is uttering? How shall a yearning for
that insatiate resting-place ever hasten for thee, poor reckless one,
the end that death alone can bring? Never pray for that. And if thy
lord prefers a fresh love, be not angered with him for that; Zeus
will judge 'twixt thee and him herein. Then mourn not for thy husband's
loss too much, nor waste thyself away.
MEDEA (within) Great Themis, and husband of Themis, behold what
I am suffering now, though I did bind that accursed one, my husband,
by strong oaths to me! O, to see him and his bride some day brought
to utter destruction, they and their house with them, for that they
presume to wrong me thus unprovoked. O my father, my country, that
I have left to my shame, after slaying my own brother.
NURSE Do ye hear her words, how loudly she adjures Themis, oft invoked,
and Zeus, whom men regard as keeper of their oaths? On no mere trifle
surely will our mistress spend her rage.
CHORUS Would that she would come forth for us to see, and listen
to the words of counsel we might give, if haply she might lay aside
the fierce fury of her wrath, and her temper stern. Never be my zeal
at any rate denied my friends! But go thou and bring her hither outside
the house, and tell her this our friendly thought; haste thee ere
she do some mischief to those inside the house, for this sorrow of
hers is mounting high.
NURSE This will I do; but I doubt whether I shall persuade my mistress;
still willingly will I undertake this trouble for you; albeit, she
glares upon her servants with the look of a lioness with cubs, whenso
anyone draws nigh to speak to her. Wert thou to call the men of old
time rude uncultured boors thou wouldst not err, seeing that they
devised their hymns for festive occasions, for banquets, and to grace
the board, a pleasure to catch the ear, shed o'er our life, but no
man hath found a way to allay hated grief by music and the minstrel's
varied strain, whence arise slaughters and fell strokes of fate to
o'erthrow the homes of men. And yet this were surely a gain, to heal
men's wounds by music's spell, but why tune they their idle song where
rich banquets are spread? For of itself doth the rich banquet, set
before them, afford to men delight.
CHORUS I heard a bitter cry of lamentation! loudly, bitterly she
calls on the traitor of her marriage bed, her perfidious spouse; by
grievous wrongs oppressed she invokes Themis, bride of Zeus, witness
of oaths, who brought her unto Hellas, the land that fronts the strand
of Asia, o'er the sea by night through ocean's boundless gate.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
This passage continues as Medea is confronted by Creon, in part 2.
The Nurse (Part 1) of Euripides' Medea.
Unlike previous episodes, the next seven are actually a play, performed by myself, and by my sister Aly playing as Medea. In this passage, Jason has decided to leave her and wed the daughter of Creon, and worse, Medea's family is to be driven from the city.
Two servants, an Attendant watching the children and an old nurse, discuss the recent marital woes, while off stage Medea cries in lamentation. After the Attendant leaves, both the nurse and the chorus worry what sort of revenge awaits Jason and his bride.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
The Nurse (Part 1),
a Legendary Passage,
from Euripides' Medea,
trans. by E. P. Coleridge.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Before MEDEA's house in Corinth, near the palace Of CREON. The NURSE
enters from the house.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NURSE Ah! Would to Heaven the good ship Argo ne'er had sped its
course to the Colchian land through the misty blue Symplegades, nor
ever in the glens of Pelion the pine been felled to furnish with oars
the chieftain's hands, who went to fetch the golden fleece for Pelias;
for then would my own mistress Medea never have sailed to the turrets
of Iolcos, her soul with love for Jason smitten, nor would she have
beguiled the daughters of Pelias to slay their father and come to
live here in the land of Corinth with her husband and children, where
her exile found favour with the citizens to whose land she had come,
and in all things of her own accord was she at one with Jason, the
greatest safeguard this when wife and husband do agree; but now their
love is all turned to hate, and tenderest ties are weak. For Jason
hath betrayed his own children and my mistress dear for the love of
a royal bride, for he hath wedded the daughter of Creon, lord of this
land. While Medea, his hapless wife, thus scorned, appeals to the
oaths he swore, recalls the strong pledge his right hand gave, and
bids heaven be witness what requital she is finding from Jason. And
here she lies fasting, yielding her body to her grief, wasting away
in tears ever since she learnt that she was wronged by her husband,
never lifting her eye nor raising her face from off the ground; and
she lends as deaf an ear to her friend's warning as if she were a
rock or ocean billow, save when she turns her snow-white neck aside
and softly to herself bemoans her father dear, her country and her
home, which she gave up to come hither with the man who now holds
her in dishonour. She, poor lady, hath by sad experience learnt how
good a thing it is never to quit one's native land. And she hates
her children now and feels no joy at seeing them; I fear she may contrive
some untoward scheme; for her mood is dangerous nor will she brook
her cruel treatment; full well I know her, and I much do dread that
she will plunge the keen sword through their hearts, stealing without
a word into the chamber where their marriage couch is spread, or else
that she will slay the prince and bridegroom too, and so find some
calamity still more grievous than the present; for dreadful is her
wrath; verily the man that doth incur her hate will have no easy task
to raise o'er her a song of triumph. Lo! where her sons come hither
from their childish sports; little they reck of their mother's woes,
for the soul of the young is no friend to sorrow. (The ATTENDANT
leads in MEDEA'S children.)
ATTENDANT Why dost thou, so long my lady's own handmaid, stand here
at the gate alone, loudly lamenting to thyself the piteous tale? how
comes it that Medea will have thee leave her to herself?
NURSE Old man, attendant on the sons of Jason, our masters' fortunes
when they go awry make good slaves grieve and touch their hearts.
Oh! have come to such a pitch of grief that there stole a yearning
wish upon me to come forth hither and proclaim to heaven and earth
my mistress's hard fate.
ATTENDANT What! has not the poor lady ceased yet from her lamentation?
NURSE Would I were as thou art! the mischief is but now beginning;
it has not reached its climax yet.
ATTENDANT O foolish one, if I may call my mistress such a name; how
little she recks of evils yet more recent!
NURSE What mean'st, old man? grudge not to tell me.
ATTENDANT 'Tis naught; I do repent me even of the words I have spoken.
NURSE Nay, by thy beard I conjure thee, hide it not from thy fellow-slave; will be silent, if need be, on that text.
ATTENDANT I heard one say, pretending not to listen as I approached
the place where our greybeards sit playing draughts near Pirene's
sacred spring, that Creon, the ruler of this land, is bent on driving
these children and their mother from the boundaries of Corinth; but
I know not whether the news is to be relied upon, and would fain it
were not.
NURSE What! will Jason brook such treatment of his sons, even though
he be at variance with their mother?
ATTENDANT Old ties give way to new; he bears no longer any love to
this family.
NURSE Undone, it seems, are we, if to old woes fresh ones we add,
ere we have drained the former to the dregs.
ATTENDANT Hold thou thy peace, say not a word of this; 'tis no time
for our mistress to learn hereof.
NURSE O children, do ye hear how your father feels towards you? Perdition
catch him, but no he is my master still; yet is he proved a very traitor
to his nearest and dearest.
ATTENDANT And who 'mongst men is not? Art learning only now, that
every single man cares for himself more than for his neighbour, some
from honest motives, others for mere gain's sake? seeing that to indulge
his passion their father has ceased to love these children.
NURSE Go, children, within the house; all will be well. Do thou keep
them as far away as may be, and bring them not near their mother in
her evil hour. For ere this have I seen her eyeing them savagely,
as though she were minded to do them some hurt, and well I know she
will not cease from her fury till she have pounced on some victim.
At least may she turn her hand against her foes, and not against her
friends.
MEDEA (chanting within) Ah, me! a wretched suffering woman I! O
would that I could die!
NURSE (chanting) 'Tis as I said, my dear children; wild fancies
stir your mother's heart, wild fury goads her on. Into the house without
delay, come not near her eye, approach her not, beware her savage
mood, the fell tempest of her reckless heart. In, in with what speed
ye may. For 'tis plain she will soon redouble her fury; that cry is
but the herald of the gathering storm-cloud whose lightning soon will
flash; what will her proud restless soul, in the anguish of despair,
be guilty of? (The ATTENDANT takes the children into the house.)
MEDEA(chanting within) Ah, me! the agony I have suffered, deep enough
to call for these laments! Curse you and your father too, ye children
damned, sons of a doomed mother! Ruin seize the whole family!
NURSE (chanting) Ah me! ah me! the pity of it! Why, pray, do thy
children share their father's crime? Why hatest thou them? Woe is
you, poor children, how do I grieve for you lest ye suffer some outrage!
Strange are the tempers of princes, and maybe because they seldom
have to obey, and mostly lord it over others, change they their moods
with difficulty. 'Tis better then to have been trained to live on
equal terms. Be it mine to reach old age, not in proud pomp, but in
security! Moderation wins the day first as a better word for men to
use, and likewise it is far the best course for them to pursue; but
greatness that doth o'erreach itself, brings no blessing to mortal
men; but pays a penalty of greater ruin whenever fortune is wroth
with a family. (The CHORUS enters. The following lines between the
NURSE, CHORUS, and MEDEA are sung.)
CHORUS I heard the voice, uplifted loud, of our poor Colchian lady,
nor yet is she quiet; speak, aged dame, for as I stood by the house
with double gates I heard a voice of weeping from within, and I do
grieve, lady, for the sorrows of this house, for it hath won my love.
NURSE 'Tis a house no more; all that is passed away long since; a
royal bride keeps Jason at her side, while our mistress pines away
in her bower, finding no comfort for her soul in aught her friends
can say.
MEDEA (within) Oh, oh! Would that Heaven's levin bolt would cleave
this head in twain! What gain is life to me? Woe, woe is me! O, to
die and win release, quitting this loathed existence!
CHORUS Didst hear, O Zeus, thou earth, and thou, O light, the piteous
note of woe the hapless wife is uttering? How shall a yearning for
that insatiate resting-place ever hasten for thee, poor reckless one,
the end that death alone can bring? Never pray for that. And if thy
lord prefers a fresh love, be not angered with him for that; Zeus
will judge 'twixt thee and him herein. Then mourn not for thy husband's
loss too much, nor waste thyself away.
MEDEA (within) Great Themis, and husband of Themis, behold what
I am suffering now, though I did bind that accursed one, my husband,
by strong oaths to me! O, to see him and his bride some day brought
to utter destruction, they and their house with them, for that they
presume to wrong me thus unprovoked. O my father, my country, that
I have left to my shame, after slaying my own brother.
NURSE Do ye hear her words, how loudly she adjures Themis, oft invoked,
and Zeus, whom men regard as keeper of their oaths? On no mere trifle
surely will our mistress spend her rage.
CHORUS Would that she would come forth for us to see, and listen
to the words of counsel we might give, if haply she might lay aside
the fierce fury of her wrath, and her temper stern. Never be my zeal
at any rate denied my friends! But go thou and bring her hither outside
the house, and tell her this our friendly thought; haste thee ere
she do some mischief to those inside the house, for this sorrow of
hers is mounting high.
NURSE This will I do; but I doubt whether I shall persuade my mistress;
still willingly will I undertake this trouble for you; albeit, she
glares upon her servants with the look of a lioness with cubs, whenso
anyone draws nigh to speak to her. Wert thou to call the men of old
time rude uncultured boors thou wouldst not err, seeing that they
devised their hymns for festive occasions, for banquets, and to grace
the board, a pleasure to catch the ear, shed o'er our life, but no
man hath found a way to allay hated grief by music and the minstrel's
varied strain, whence arise slaughters and fell strokes of fate to
o'erthrow the homes of men. And yet this were surely a gain, to heal
men's wounds by music's spell, but why tune they their idle song where
rich banquets are spread? For of itself doth the rich banquet, set
before them, afford to men delight.
CHORUS I heard a bitter cry of lamentation! loudly, bitterly she
calls on the traitor of her marriage bed, her perfidious spouse; by
grievous wrongs oppressed she invokes Themis, bride of Zeus, witness
of oaths, who brought her unto Hellas, the land that fronts the strand
of Asia, o'er the sea by night through ocean's boundless gate.
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/eurip/medea.htm
This passage continues as Medea is confronted by Creon, in part 2.
Friday, March 16, 2018
LP0089 -XV ARGONAUTS- Medea's Letter, from Ovid's Heroides
Legendary Passages #0089 -XV ARGONAUTS-
Medea's Letter, from Ovid's Heroides.
Previously, Jason left Medea for another woman. Now she wants him to take her back, or else...
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides3.html#12
Medea's Letter,
a Legendary Passage from,
Publius Ovidius Naso,
HEROIDES EPISTLE XII,
trans. by GRANT SHOWERMAN
Meanwhile the condition is imposed that you press the hard necks of the fierce bulls at the unaccustomed plow. To Mars the bulls belonged, raging with more than mere horns, for their breathing was of terrible fire; of solid bronze were their feet, wrought round with bronze their nostrils, made black, too, by the blasts of their own breath. Besides this, you are bidden to scatter with obedient hand over the wide fields the seeds that should beget peoples to assail you with weapons born with themselves; a baneful harvest, that, to its own husbandman. The eyes of the guardian that know not yielding to sleep – by some art to elude them is your final task.
Aeëtes has spoken; in gloom you all rise up, and the high table is removed from the purple-spread couches. How far away then from your thought were Creusa’s dowry-realm, and the daughter of great Creon, and Creon the father of your bride! With foreboding you depart; and as you go my moist eyes follow you, and in faint murmur comes from my tongue: “Fare thou well!” Laying myself on the ordered couch within my chamber, grievously wounded, in tears I passed the whole night long; before my eyes appeared the bulls and the dreadful harvest, before my eyes the unsleeping serpent. On the one hand was love, on the other, fear; and fear increased my very love. Morning came, and my dear sister, admitted to my chamber, found me with loosened hair and lying prone upon my face, and everywhere my tears. She implores aid for your Minyae. What one asks, another is to receive; what she petitions for the Aesonian youth, I grant.
There is a grove, sombre with pine-trees and the fronds of the ilex; into it scarce can the rays of the sun find way. There is in it – there was, at least – a shrine to Diana, wherein stands the goddess, a golden image fashioned by barbaric hand. Do you know the place? or have places fallen from your mind along with me? We came to the spot. You were the first to speak, with those faithless lips, and these were your words: “To thy hand fortune has committed the right of choosing or not my deliverance, and in thy hand are the ways of life and death for me. To have power to ruin is enough, if anyone delight in power for itself; but to save me will be greater glory. By our misfortunes, which thou hast power to relieve, I pray, by thy line, and by the godhead of thy all-seeing grandsire the sun, by the three-fold face and holy mysteries of Diana, and by the gods of that race of thine – if so be gods it have – by all these, O maiden, have pity upon me, have pity on my men; be kind to me and make me thine for ever! And if it chance thou dost not disdain a Pelasgian suitor – but how can I hope the gods will be so facile to my wish? – may my spirit vanish away into thin air before another than thou shall come a bride to my chamber! My witness be Juno, ward of the rites of wedlock, and the goddess in whose marble shrine we stand!”
Words like these – and how slight a part of them is here! – and your right hand clasped with mine, moved the heart of the simple maid. I saw even tears – or was there in the tears, too, part of your deceit? Thus quickly was I ensnared, girl that I was, by your words.
You yoke together the bronze-footed bulls with your body unharmed by their fire, and cleave the solid mould with the share as you were bid. The ploughed fields you sow full with envenomed teeth in place of seed; and there rises out of the earth, with sword and shield, a warrior band. Myself, the giver of the charmèd drug, sat pallid there at sight of men all suddenly arisen and in arms; until the earth-born brothers – O deed most wonderful! – drew arms and came to the grapple each with each.
Then, lo and behold! all a-bristle with rattling scales, come the unsleeping sentinel, hissing and sweeping the ground with winding belly. Where then was your rich dowry? Where then your royal consort, and the Isthmus that sunders the waters of two seas? I, the maiden who am now at last become a barbarian in your eyes, who now am poor, who now seem baneful – I closed the lids of the flame-like eyes in slumber wrought by my drug, and gave into your hand the fleece to steal away unharmed. I betrayed my sire, I left my throne and my native soil; the reward I get is leave to live in exile! My maidenly innocence has become the spoil of a pirate from overseas; beloved mother and best of sisters I have left behind.
But thee, O my brother, I did not leave behind as I fled! In this one place my pen fails. Of the deed my right hand was bold enough to do, it is not bold enough to write. So I, too, should have been torn limb from limb – but with thee! And yet I did not fear – for what, after that, could I fear? – to trust myself to the sea, woman though I was, and now with guilt upon me. Where is heavenly justice? Where the gods? Let the penalty that is our due overtake us on the deep – you for your treachery, me for my trustfulness!
Would the Stymplegades had caught and crushed us out together, and that my bones were clinging now to yours; or Scylla the ravening submerged us in the deep to be devoured by her dogs – fit were it for Scylla to work woe to ingrate men! And she who spews forth so many times the floods, and sucks them so many times back in again – would she had brought us, too, beneath the Trinacrian wave! Yet unharmed and victorious you return to Haemonia’s towns, and the golden fleece is laid before your fathers’ gods.
Why rehearse the tale of Pelias’ daughters, by devotion led to evil deeds – of how their maiden hands laid knife to the members of their sire? I may be blamed by others, but you perforce must praise me – you, for whom so many times I have been driven to crime.
Yet you have dared – O, fit words fail me for my righteous wrath! – you have dared to say: “Withdraw from the palace of Aeson’s line!” At your bidding I have withdrawn from your palace, taking with me our two children, and – what follows me evermore – my love for you. When, all suddenly, there came to my ears the chant of Hymen, and to my eyes the gleam of blazing torches, and the pipe poured forth its notes, for you a wedding-strain, but for me a strain more tearful than the funeral trump, I will filled with fear; I did not yet believe such monstrous guilt could be; but all my breast none the less grew chill. The throng pressed eagerly on, crying “Hymen, O Hymenaeus!” in full chorus – the nearer the cry, for me the more dreadful. My slaves turned away and wept, seeking to hide their tears – who would be willing messenger of tidings so ill? Whatever it was, ‘twas better, indeed, that I not know; but my heart was heavy, as if I really knew, when the younger of the children, at my bidding, and eager for the sight, went and stood at the outer threshold of the double door. “Here, mother, come out!” he cries to me. “A procession is coming, and my father Jason leading it. He’s all in gold, and driving a team of horses!” Then straight I rent my cloak and beat my breast and cried aloud, and my cheeks were at the mercy of my nails. My heart impelled me to rush into the midst of the moving throng, to tear off the wreaths from my ordered locks; I scarce could keep from crying out, thus with hair all torn, “He is mine!” and laying hold on you.
Ah, injured father, rejoice! Rejoice, ye Colchians whom I left! Shades of my brother, receive in my fate your sacrifice due; I am abandoned; I have lost my throne, my native soil, my home, my husband – who alone for me took the place of all! Dragons and maddened bulls, it seems, I could subdue; a man alone I could not; I, who could beat back fierce fire with wise drugs, have not the power to escape the flames of my own passion. My very incantations, herbs, and arts abandon me; naught does my goddess aid me, naught the sacrifice I make to potent Hecate. I take no pleasure in the day; my nights are watches of bitterness, and gentle sleep is far departed from my wretched soul. I, who could charm the dragon to sleep, can bring none to myself; my effort brings more good to any one else soever than to me. The limbs I saved, a wanton now embraces; ‘tis she who reaps the fruit of my toil.
Perhaps, too, when you wish to make boast to your stupid mate and say what will pleasure her unjust ears, you will fashion strange slanders against my face and against my ways. Let her make merry and be joyful over my faults! Let her make merry, and lie aloft on the Tyrian purple – she shall weep, and the flames that consume her will surpass my own! While sword and fire are at my hand, and the juice of poison, no foe of Medea shall go unpunished!
But if it chance my entreaties touch a heart of iron, list now to words – words too humble for my proud soul! I am as much a suppliant to you as you have often been to me, and I hesitate not to cast myself at your feet. If I am cheap in your eyes, be kind to our common offspring; a hard stepdame will be cruel to the fruitage of my womb. Their resemblance to you is all too great, and I am touched by the likeness; and as often as I see them, my eyes drop tears. By the gods above, by the light of your grandsire’s beams, by my favours to you, and by the two children who are our mutual pledge – restore me to the bed for which I madly left so much behind; be faithful to your promises, and come to my aid as I came to yours! I do not implore you to go forth against bulls and men, nor ask your aid to quiet and overcome a dragon; it is you I ask for, - you, whom I have earned, whom you yourself gave to me, by whom I became a mother, as you by me a father.
Where is my dowry, you ask? On the field I counted it out – that field which you had to plough before you could bear away the fleece. The famous golden ram, sightly for deep flock, is my dowry – the which, should I say to you “Restore it!” you would refuse to render up. My dowry is yourself – saved; my dowry is the band of Grecian youth! Go now, wretch, compare with that your wealth of Sisyphus! That you are alive, that you take to wife one who, with the father she brings you, is of kingly station, that you have the very power of being ingrate – you owe to me. Whom, hark you, I will straight – but what boots it to foretell your penalty? My ire is in travail with mighty threats. Whither my ire leads, will I follow. Mayhap I shall repent me of what I do – but I repent me, too, of regard for a faithless husband’s good. Be that the concern of the god who now embroils my heart! Something portentous, surely, is working in my soul!
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides3.html#12
This passage continues with a letter from Laodameia, but our next passage is part one of Euripides' play, Medea.
Medea's Letter, from Ovid's Heroides.
Previously, Jason left Medea for another woman. Now she wants him to take her back, or else...
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides3.html#12
Medea's Letter,
a Legendary Passage from,
Publius Ovidius Naso,
HEROIDES EPISTLE XII,
trans. by GRANT SHOWERMAN
Meanwhile the condition is imposed that you press the hard necks of the fierce bulls at the unaccustomed plow. To Mars the bulls belonged, raging with more than mere horns, for their breathing was of terrible fire; of solid bronze were their feet, wrought round with bronze their nostrils, made black, too, by the blasts of their own breath. Besides this, you are bidden to scatter with obedient hand over the wide fields the seeds that should beget peoples to assail you with weapons born with themselves; a baneful harvest, that, to its own husbandman. The eyes of the guardian that know not yielding to sleep – by some art to elude them is your final task.
Aeëtes has spoken; in gloom you all rise up, and the high table is removed from the purple-spread couches. How far away then from your thought were Creusa’s dowry-realm, and the daughter of great Creon, and Creon the father of your bride! With foreboding you depart; and as you go my moist eyes follow you, and in faint murmur comes from my tongue: “Fare thou well!” Laying myself on the ordered couch within my chamber, grievously wounded, in tears I passed the whole night long; before my eyes appeared the bulls and the dreadful harvest, before my eyes the unsleeping serpent. On the one hand was love, on the other, fear; and fear increased my very love. Morning came, and my dear sister, admitted to my chamber, found me with loosened hair and lying prone upon my face, and everywhere my tears. She implores aid for your Minyae. What one asks, another is to receive; what she petitions for the Aesonian youth, I grant.
There is a grove, sombre with pine-trees and the fronds of the ilex; into it scarce can the rays of the sun find way. There is in it – there was, at least – a shrine to Diana, wherein stands the goddess, a golden image fashioned by barbaric hand. Do you know the place? or have places fallen from your mind along with me? We came to the spot. You were the first to speak, with those faithless lips, and these were your words: “To thy hand fortune has committed the right of choosing or not my deliverance, and in thy hand are the ways of life and death for me. To have power to ruin is enough, if anyone delight in power for itself; but to save me will be greater glory. By our misfortunes, which thou hast power to relieve, I pray, by thy line, and by the godhead of thy all-seeing grandsire the sun, by the three-fold face and holy mysteries of Diana, and by the gods of that race of thine – if so be gods it have – by all these, O maiden, have pity upon me, have pity on my men; be kind to me and make me thine for ever! And if it chance thou dost not disdain a Pelasgian suitor – but how can I hope the gods will be so facile to my wish? – may my spirit vanish away into thin air before another than thou shall come a bride to my chamber! My witness be Juno, ward of the rites of wedlock, and the goddess in whose marble shrine we stand!”
Words like these – and how slight a part of them is here! – and your right hand clasped with mine, moved the heart of the simple maid. I saw even tears – or was there in the tears, too, part of your deceit? Thus quickly was I ensnared, girl that I was, by your words.
You yoke together the bronze-footed bulls with your body unharmed by their fire, and cleave the solid mould with the share as you were bid. The ploughed fields you sow full with envenomed teeth in place of seed; and there rises out of the earth, with sword and shield, a warrior band. Myself, the giver of the charmèd drug, sat pallid there at sight of men all suddenly arisen and in arms; until the earth-born brothers – O deed most wonderful! – drew arms and came to the grapple each with each.
Then, lo and behold! all a-bristle with rattling scales, come the unsleeping sentinel, hissing and sweeping the ground with winding belly. Where then was your rich dowry? Where then your royal consort, and the Isthmus that sunders the waters of two seas? I, the maiden who am now at last become a barbarian in your eyes, who now am poor, who now seem baneful – I closed the lids of the flame-like eyes in slumber wrought by my drug, and gave into your hand the fleece to steal away unharmed. I betrayed my sire, I left my throne and my native soil; the reward I get is leave to live in exile! My maidenly innocence has become the spoil of a pirate from overseas; beloved mother and best of sisters I have left behind.
But thee, O my brother, I did not leave behind as I fled! In this one place my pen fails. Of the deed my right hand was bold enough to do, it is not bold enough to write. So I, too, should have been torn limb from limb – but with thee! And yet I did not fear – for what, after that, could I fear? – to trust myself to the sea, woman though I was, and now with guilt upon me. Where is heavenly justice? Where the gods? Let the penalty that is our due overtake us on the deep – you for your treachery, me for my trustfulness!
Would the Stymplegades had caught and crushed us out together, and that my bones were clinging now to yours; or Scylla the ravening submerged us in the deep to be devoured by her dogs – fit were it for Scylla to work woe to ingrate men! And she who spews forth so many times the floods, and sucks them so many times back in again – would she had brought us, too, beneath the Trinacrian wave! Yet unharmed and victorious you return to Haemonia’s towns, and the golden fleece is laid before your fathers’ gods.
Why rehearse the tale of Pelias’ daughters, by devotion led to evil deeds – of how their maiden hands laid knife to the members of their sire? I may be blamed by others, but you perforce must praise me – you, for whom so many times I have been driven to crime.
Yet you have dared – O, fit words fail me for my righteous wrath! – you have dared to say: “Withdraw from the palace of Aeson’s line!” At your bidding I have withdrawn from your palace, taking with me our two children, and – what follows me evermore – my love for you. When, all suddenly, there came to my ears the chant of Hymen, and to my eyes the gleam of blazing torches, and the pipe poured forth its notes, for you a wedding-strain, but for me a strain more tearful than the funeral trump, I will filled with fear; I did not yet believe such monstrous guilt could be; but all my breast none the less grew chill. The throng pressed eagerly on, crying “Hymen, O Hymenaeus!” in full chorus – the nearer the cry, for me the more dreadful. My slaves turned away and wept, seeking to hide their tears – who would be willing messenger of tidings so ill? Whatever it was, ‘twas better, indeed, that I not know; but my heart was heavy, as if I really knew, when the younger of the children, at my bidding, and eager for the sight, went and stood at the outer threshold of the double door. “Here, mother, come out!” he cries to me. “A procession is coming, and my father Jason leading it. He’s all in gold, and driving a team of horses!” Then straight I rent my cloak and beat my breast and cried aloud, and my cheeks were at the mercy of my nails. My heart impelled me to rush into the midst of the moving throng, to tear off the wreaths from my ordered locks; I scarce could keep from crying out, thus with hair all torn, “He is mine!” and laying hold on you.
Ah, injured father, rejoice! Rejoice, ye Colchians whom I left! Shades of my brother, receive in my fate your sacrifice due; I am abandoned; I have lost my throne, my native soil, my home, my husband – who alone for me took the place of all! Dragons and maddened bulls, it seems, I could subdue; a man alone I could not; I, who could beat back fierce fire with wise drugs, have not the power to escape the flames of my own passion. My very incantations, herbs, and arts abandon me; naught does my goddess aid me, naught the sacrifice I make to potent Hecate. I take no pleasure in the day; my nights are watches of bitterness, and gentle sleep is far departed from my wretched soul. I, who could charm the dragon to sleep, can bring none to myself; my effort brings more good to any one else soever than to me. The limbs I saved, a wanton now embraces; ‘tis she who reaps the fruit of my toil.
Perhaps, too, when you wish to make boast to your stupid mate and say what will pleasure her unjust ears, you will fashion strange slanders against my face and against my ways. Let her make merry and be joyful over my faults! Let her make merry, and lie aloft on the Tyrian purple – she shall weep, and the flames that consume her will surpass my own! While sword and fire are at my hand, and the juice of poison, no foe of Medea shall go unpunished!
But if it chance my entreaties touch a heart of iron, list now to words – words too humble for my proud soul! I am as much a suppliant to you as you have often been to me, and I hesitate not to cast myself at your feet. If I am cheap in your eyes, be kind to our common offspring; a hard stepdame will be cruel to the fruitage of my womb. Their resemblance to you is all too great, and I am touched by the likeness; and as often as I see them, my eyes drop tears. By the gods above, by the light of your grandsire’s beams, by my favours to you, and by the two children who are our mutual pledge – restore me to the bed for which I madly left so much behind; be faithful to your promises, and come to my aid as I came to yours! I do not implore you to go forth against bulls and men, nor ask your aid to quiet and overcome a dragon; it is you I ask for, - you, whom I have earned, whom you yourself gave to me, by whom I became a mother, as you by me a father.
Where is my dowry, you ask? On the field I counted it out – that field which you had to plough before you could bear away the fleece. The famous golden ram, sightly for deep flock, is my dowry – the which, should I say to you “Restore it!” you would refuse to render up. My dowry is yourself – saved; my dowry is the band of Grecian youth! Go now, wretch, compare with that your wealth of Sisyphus! That you are alive, that you take to wife one who, with the father she brings you, is of kingly station, that you have the very power of being ingrate – you owe to me. Whom, hark you, I will straight – but what boots it to foretell your penalty? My ire is in travail with mighty threats. Whither my ire leads, will I follow. Mayhap I shall repent me of what I do – but I repent me, too, of regard for a faithless husband’s good. Be that the concern of the god who now embroils my heart! Something portentous, surely, is working in my soul!
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides3.html#12
This passage continues with a letter from Laodameia, but our next passage is part one of Euripides' play, Medea.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
LP0088 -XIV ARGNONAUTS- Canace & Medea, from Ovid's Heroides
Legendary Passages #0088 -XIV ARGNONAUTS-
Canace & Medea, from Ovid's Heroides.
Previously, Medea helped Jason win the golden fleece, they got married, and lived happily ever after. In this passage, however, with their marriage at an end, Medea recounts their first fateful meeting.
But first, a letter to Marcareus from Canace, son and daughter of King Aeolus, and star-crossed lovers as well. Their forbidden love yields a son that they try to sneak out of the palace. But the newborn cries out and Canace is confronted by her father. King Aeolus orders the babe abandoned in the woods, and sends his daughter an honor blade to end her life. She bids Marcareus, brother and husband both, to bury her with their son, and then to remember her, and live on.
Medea's letter to Jason begins several years after they moved to Corinth and had children. Leaving her by the wayside, Jason decides to marry the daughter of Creon. Medea, having betrayed her own family and country on Jason's behalf, is justifiably upset. She bitterly recalls their first encounter, lamenting her love at first sight.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides3.html#12
Canace & Medea,
a Legendary Passage from,
Publius Ovidius Naso,
HEROIDES EPISTLES XI-XII,
trans. by GRANT SHOWERMAN
XI. CANACE TO MACAREUS
If aught of what I write is yet blotted deep and escapes your eye, ‘twill be because the little roll has been stained by its mistress’ blood. My right hand holds the pen, a drawn blade the other holds, and the paper lies unrolled in my lap. This is the picture of Aeolus’ daughter writing to her brother; in this guise, it seems, I may please my hard-hearted sire.
I would he himself were here to view my end, and the deed were done before the eyes of him who orders it! Fierce as he is, far harsher than his own east-winds, he would look dry-eyed upon my wounds. Surely, something comes from a life with savage winds; his temper is like that of his subjects. It is Notus, and Zephyrus, and Sithonian Aquilo, over whom he rules, and over thy pinions, wanton Eurus. He rules the winds, alas! but his swelling wrath he does not rule, and the realms of his possession are less wide than his faults. Of what avail for me through my grandsires’ names to reach even to the skies, to be able to number Jove among my kin? Is there less deadlines in the blade – my funeral gift! – that I hold in my woman’s hand, weapon not meet for me?
Ah, Macareus, would that the hour that made us two as one had come after my death! Oh why, my brother, did you ever love me more than brother, and why have I been to you what a sister should not be? I, too, was inflamed by love; I felt some god in my glowing heart, and knew him from what I sued to hear he was. My colour had fled from my face; wasting had shrunk my frame; I scarce took food, and with unwilling mouth; my sleep was never easy, the night was a year for me, and I groaned, though stricken with no pain. Nor could I render myself a reason why I did these things; I did not know what it was to be in love – yet in love I was.
The first to perceive my trouble, in her old wife’s way, was my nurse; she first, my nurse, said: “Daughter of Aeolus, thou art in love!” I blushed, and shame bent down my eyes into my bosom; I said no word, but this was sign enough that I confessed. And presently there grew apace the burden of my wayward bosom, and my weakened frame felt the weight of its secret load. What herbs and what medicines did my nurse not bring to me, applying them with bold hand to drive forth entirely from my bosom – this was the only secret we kept from you – the burden that was increasing there! Ah, too full of life, the little thing withstood the arts employed against it, and was kept safe from its hidden foe!
And now for the ninth time had Phoebus’ fairest sister risen, and for the tenth time the moon was driving on her light-bearing steeds. I knew not what caused the sudden pangs in me; to travail I was unused, a soldier new to the service. I could not keep from groans. “Why betray thy fault?” said the ancient dame who knew my secret, and stopped my crying lips. What shall I do, unhappy that I am? The pains compel my groans, but fear, the nurse, and shame itself forbid. I repress my groans, and try to take back the words that slip from me, and force myself to drink my very tears. Death was before my eyes; and Lucina denied her aid – death, too, were I to die, would fasten upon me heavy guilt – when leaning over me, you tore my robe and my hair away, and warmed my bosom back to life with the pressure of your own, and said: “Live, sister, sister O most dear; live, and do not be the death of two beings in one! Let good hope give thee strength; for now thou shalt be thy brother’s bride. He who made thee mother will also make thee wife.”
Dead that I am, believe me, yet at your words I live again, and have brought forth the reproach and burden of my womb. But why rejoice? In the midst of the palace hall sits Aeolus; the sign of my fault must be removed from my father’s eyes. With fruits and whitening olive-branches, and with light fillets, the careful dame attempts to hide the babe, and makes pretence of sacrifice, and utters words of prayer; the people give way to let her pass, my father himself gives way. She is already near the threshold – my father’s ears have caught the crying sound, and the babe is lost, betrayed by his own sign! Aeolus catches up the child and reveals the pretended sacrifice; the whole palace resounds with his maddened cries. As the sea is set a-trembling when a light breeze passes o’er, as the ashen branch is shaken by the tepid breeze from the south, so might you have seen my blanching members quiver; the couch was a-quake with the body that lay upon it. He rushes in and with cries makes known my shame to all, and scarce restrains his hand from my wretched face. Myself in my confusion did naught but pour forth tears; my tongue had grown dumb with the icy chill of fear.
And now he had ordered his little grandchild thrown to the gods and birds, to be abandoned in some solitary place. The hapless babe broke forth in wailings – you would have thought he understood – and with what utterance he could entreated his grandsire. What heart do you think was mine then, O my brother – for you can judge from your own – when the enemy before my eyes bore away to the deep forests the fruit of my bosom to be devoured by mountain wolves? My father had gone out of my chamber; then at length could I beat my breasts and furrow my cheeks with the nail.
Meanwhile with sorrowful air came one of my father’s guards, and pronounced these shameful words: “Aeolus sends this sword to you” – he handed me the sword – “and bids you know from your desert what it may mean.” I do know, and shall bravely make use of the violent blade; I shall bury in my breast my father’s gift. Is it presents like this, O my sire, you give me on my marriage? With this dowry from you, O father, shall your daughter be made rich? Take away afar, deluded Hymenaeus, they wedding-torches, and fly with frightened foot from these nefarious halls! Bring for me the torches ye bear, Erinyes dark, and let my funeral pyre blaze bright from the fires ye give! Wed happily under a better fate, O my sisters, but yet remember me though lost!
What crime could the babe commit, with so few hours of life? With what act could he, scarce born, do harm to his grandsire? If it could be he deserved his death, let it be judged he did – ah, wretched child, it is my fault he suffers for! O my son, grief of thy mother, prey of the ravening beasts, ah me! torn limb from limb on thy day of birth; O my son, miserable pledge of my unhallowed love – this was the first of days for thee, and this for thee the last. Fate did not permit me to shed o’er thee the tears I owed, nor to bear to thy tomb the shorn lock; I have not bent o’er thee, nor culled the kiss from thy cold lips. Greedy wilds beasts are rending in pieces the child my womb put forth.
I, too, shall follow the shades of my babe – shall deal myself the stroke – and shall not long have been called or mother or bereaved. Do thou, nevertheless, O hoped for in vain by thy wretched sister, collect, I entreat, the scattered members of thy son, and bring them again to their mother to share her sepulchre, and let one urn, however scant, possess us both! O live, and forget me not; pour forth thy tears upon my wounds, nor shrink from her thou once didst love, and who loved thee. Do thou, I pray, fulfil the behests of the sister thou didst love too well; the behest of my father I shall myself perform!
XII. MEDEA TO JASON
And yet for you, I remember, I the queen of Colchis could find time, when you besought that my art might bring you help. Then was the time when the sisters who pay out the fated thread of mortal life should have unwound for aye my spindle. Then could Medea have ended well! Whatever of life has been lengthened out for me from what time forth has been but punishment.
Ah me! why was the ship from the forests of Pelion ever driven over the seas by strong young arms in quest of the ram of Phrixus? Why did we Colchians ever cast eye upon Magnesian Argo, and why did your Greek crew ever drink the water of the Phasis? Why did I too greatly delight in those golden locks of yours, in your comely ways, and in the false graces of your tongue? Yet delight too greatly I did – else, when once the strange craft had been beached upon our sands and brought us her bold crew, all unanointed would the unremembering son of Aeson have gone forth to meet the fires exhaled from the flame-scorched nostrils of the bulls; he would have scattered the seeds – as many as the seeds were the enemy, too – for the sower himself to fall in strife with his own sowing! How much perfidy, vile wretch, would have perished with you, and how many woes been averted from my head!
‘Tis some pleasure to reproach the ungrateful with favours done. That pleasure I will enjoy; that is the only delight I shall win from you. Bidden to turn the hitherto untried craft to the shores of Colchis, you set foot in the rich realms of my native land. There I, Medea, was what here your new bride is; as rich as her sire is, so rich was mine. Hers holds Ephyre, washed by two seas; mine, all the country which lies along the left strand of the Pontus e’en to the snows of Scythia.
Aeëtes welcomes to his home the Pelasgian youths, and you rest your Greek limbs upon the pictured couch. Then ‘twas that I saw you, then began to know you; that was the first impulse to the downfall of my soul. I saw you, and I was undone; nor did I kindle with ordinary fires, but like the pine-torch kindled before the mighty gods. Not only were you noble to look upon, but my fates were dragging me to doom; your eyes had robbed mine of their power to see. Traitor, you saw it – for who can well hide love? Its flame shines forth its own betrayer.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides3.html#12
This passage continues next episode with the winning of the golden fleece, Jason's remarriage, and a promise of vengeance, as we finish Medea's letter.
Canace & Medea, from Ovid's Heroides.
Previously, Medea helped Jason win the golden fleece, they got married, and lived happily ever after. In this passage, however, with their marriage at an end, Medea recounts their first fateful meeting.
But first, a letter to Marcareus from Canace, son and daughter of King Aeolus, and star-crossed lovers as well. Their forbidden love yields a son that they try to sneak out of the palace. But the newborn cries out and Canace is confronted by her father. King Aeolus orders the babe abandoned in the woods, and sends his daughter an honor blade to end her life. She bids Marcareus, brother and husband both, to bury her with their son, and then to remember her, and live on.
Medea's letter to Jason begins several years after they moved to Corinth and had children. Leaving her by the wayside, Jason decides to marry the daughter of Creon. Medea, having betrayed her own family and country on Jason's behalf, is justifiably upset. She bitterly recalls their first encounter, lamenting her love at first sight.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides3.html#12
Canace & Medea,
a Legendary Passage from,
Publius Ovidius Naso,
HEROIDES EPISTLES XI-XII,
trans. by GRANT SHOWERMAN
XI. CANACE TO MACAREUS
If aught of what I write is yet blotted deep and escapes your eye, ‘twill be because the little roll has been stained by its mistress’ blood. My right hand holds the pen, a drawn blade the other holds, and the paper lies unrolled in my lap. This is the picture of Aeolus’ daughter writing to her brother; in this guise, it seems, I may please my hard-hearted sire.
I would he himself were here to view my end, and the deed were done before the eyes of him who orders it! Fierce as he is, far harsher than his own east-winds, he would look dry-eyed upon my wounds. Surely, something comes from a life with savage winds; his temper is like that of his subjects. It is Notus, and Zephyrus, and Sithonian Aquilo, over whom he rules, and over thy pinions, wanton Eurus. He rules the winds, alas! but his swelling wrath he does not rule, and the realms of his possession are less wide than his faults. Of what avail for me through my grandsires’ names to reach even to the skies, to be able to number Jove among my kin? Is there less deadlines in the blade – my funeral gift! – that I hold in my woman’s hand, weapon not meet for me?
Ah, Macareus, would that the hour that made us two as one had come after my death! Oh why, my brother, did you ever love me more than brother, and why have I been to you what a sister should not be? I, too, was inflamed by love; I felt some god in my glowing heart, and knew him from what I sued to hear he was. My colour had fled from my face; wasting had shrunk my frame; I scarce took food, and with unwilling mouth; my sleep was never easy, the night was a year for me, and I groaned, though stricken with no pain. Nor could I render myself a reason why I did these things; I did not know what it was to be in love – yet in love I was.
The first to perceive my trouble, in her old wife’s way, was my nurse; she first, my nurse, said: “Daughter of Aeolus, thou art in love!” I blushed, and shame bent down my eyes into my bosom; I said no word, but this was sign enough that I confessed. And presently there grew apace the burden of my wayward bosom, and my weakened frame felt the weight of its secret load. What herbs and what medicines did my nurse not bring to me, applying them with bold hand to drive forth entirely from my bosom – this was the only secret we kept from you – the burden that was increasing there! Ah, too full of life, the little thing withstood the arts employed against it, and was kept safe from its hidden foe!
And now for the ninth time had Phoebus’ fairest sister risen, and for the tenth time the moon was driving on her light-bearing steeds. I knew not what caused the sudden pangs in me; to travail I was unused, a soldier new to the service. I could not keep from groans. “Why betray thy fault?” said the ancient dame who knew my secret, and stopped my crying lips. What shall I do, unhappy that I am? The pains compel my groans, but fear, the nurse, and shame itself forbid. I repress my groans, and try to take back the words that slip from me, and force myself to drink my very tears. Death was before my eyes; and Lucina denied her aid – death, too, were I to die, would fasten upon me heavy guilt – when leaning over me, you tore my robe and my hair away, and warmed my bosom back to life with the pressure of your own, and said: “Live, sister, sister O most dear; live, and do not be the death of two beings in one! Let good hope give thee strength; for now thou shalt be thy brother’s bride. He who made thee mother will also make thee wife.”
Dead that I am, believe me, yet at your words I live again, and have brought forth the reproach and burden of my womb. But why rejoice? In the midst of the palace hall sits Aeolus; the sign of my fault must be removed from my father’s eyes. With fruits and whitening olive-branches, and with light fillets, the careful dame attempts to hide the babe, and makes pretence of sacrifice, and utters words of prayer; the people give way to let her pass, my father himself gives way. She is already near the threshold – my father’s ears have caught the crying sound, and the babe is lost, betrayed by his own sign! Aeolus catches up the child and reveals the pretended sacrifice; the whole palace resounds with his maddened cries. As the sea is set a-trembling when a light breeze passes o’er, as the ashen branch is shaken by the tepid breeze from the south, so might you have seen my blanching members quiver; the couch was a-quake with the body that lay upon it. He rushes in and with cries makes known my shame to all, and scarce restrains his hand from my wretched face. Myself in my confusion did naught but pour forth tears; my tongue had grown dumb with the icy chill of fear.
And now he had ordered his little grandchild thrown to the gods and birds, to be abandoned in some solitary place. The hapless babe broke forth in wailings – you would have thought he understood – and with what utterance he could entreated his grandsire. What heart do you think was mine then, O my brother – for you can judge from your own – when the enemy before my eyes bore away to the deep forests the fruit of my bosom to be devoured by mountain wolves? My father had gone out of my chamber; then at length could I beat my breasts and furrow my cheeks with the nail.
Meanwhile with sorrowful air came one of my father’s guards, and pronounced these shameful words: “Aeolus sends this sword to you” – he handed me the sword – “and bids you know from your desert what it may mean.” I do know, and shall bravely make use of the violent blade; I shall bury in my breast my father’s gift. Is it presents like this, O my sire, you give me on my marriage? With this dowry from you, O father, shall your daughter be made rich? Take away afar, deluded Hymenaeus, they wedding-torches, and fly with frightened foot from these nefarious halls! Bring for me the torches ye bear, Erinyes dark, and let my funeral pyre blaze bright from the fires ye give! Wed happily under a better fate, O my sisters, but yet remember me though lost!
What crime could the babe commit, with so few hours of life? With what act could he, scarce born, do harm to his grandsire? If it could be he deserved his death, let it be judged he did – ah, wretched child, it is my fault he suffers for! O my son, grief of thy mother, prey of the ravening beasts, ah me! torn limb from limb on thy day of birth; O my son, miserable pledge of my unhallowed love – this was the first of days for thee, and this for thee the last. Fate did not permit me to shed o’er thee the tears I owed, nor to bear to thy tomb the shorn lock; I have not bent o’er thee, nor culled the kiss from thy cold lips. Greedy wilds beasts are rending in pieces the child my womb put forth.
I, too, shall follow the shades of my babe – shall deal myself the stroke – and shall not long have been called or mother or bereaved. Do thou, nevertheless, O hoped for in vain by thy wretched sister, collect, I entreat, the scattered members of thy son, and bring them again to their mother to share her sepulchre, and let one urn, however scant, possess us both! O live, and forget me not; pour forth thy tears upon my wounds, nor shrink from her thou once didst love, and who loved thee. Do thou, I pray, fulfil the behests of the sister thou didst love too well; the behest of my father I shall myself perform!
XII. MEDEA TO JASON
And yet for you, I remember, I the queen of Colchis could find time, when you besought that my art might bring you help. Then was the time when the sisters who pay out the fated thread of mortal life should have unwound for aye my spindle. Then could Medea have ended well! Whatever of life has been lengthened out for me from what time forth has been but punishment.
Ah me! why was the ship from the forests of Pelion ever driven over the seas by strong young arms in quest of the ram of Phrixus? Why did we Colchians ever cast eye upon Magnesian Argo, and why did your Greek crew ever drink the water of the Phasis? Why did I too greatly delight in those golden locks of yours, in your comely ways, and in the false graces of your tongue? Yet delight too greatly I did – else, when once the strange craft had been beached upon our sands and brought us her bold crew, all unanointed would the unremembering son of Aeson have gone forth to meet the fires exhaled from the flame-scorched nostrils of the bulls; he would have scattered the seeds – as many as the seeds were the enemy, too – for the sower himself to fall in strife with his own sowing! How much perfidy, vile wretch, would have perished with you, and how many woes been averted from my head!
‘Tis some pleasure to reproach the ungrateful with favours done. That pleasure I will enjoy; that is the only delight I shall win from you. Bidden to turn the hitherto untried craft to the shores of Colchis, you set foot in the rich realms of my native land. There I, Medea, was what here your new bride is; as rich as her sire is, so rich was mine. Hers holds Ephyre, washed by two seas; mine, all the country which lies along the left strand of the Pontus e’en to the snows of Scythia.
Aeëtes welcomes to his home the Pelasgian youths, and you rest your Greek limbs upon the pictured couch. Then ‘twas that I saw you, then began to know you; that was the first impulse to the downfall of my soul. I saw you, and I was undone; nor did I kindle with ordinary fires, but like the pine-torch kindled before the mighty gods. Not only were you noble to look upon, but my fates were dragging me to doom; your eyes had robbed mine of their power to see. Traitor, you saw it – for who can well hide love? Its flame shines forth its own betrayer.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidHeroides3.html#12
This passage continues next episode with the winning of the golden fleece, Jason's remarriage, and a promise of vengeance, as we finish Medea's letter.
Friday, February 16, 2018
LP0087 -XIII ARGONAUTS- Rejuvenation, from Ovid's Metamorphoses
Legendary Passages #0087 -XIII ARGONAUTS-
Rejuvenation, from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Previously, the Argonauts returned home with the golden fleece, discovered old King Pelias had killed Jason's father, and then Medea tricked Pelias' daughters into killing him, thinking they were restoring his youth.
In this passage, Jason's father Aeson still lives, although quite old. At Jason's request, Medea flies on her dragons across Greece, searching for magic herbs to make Aeson young again.
She succeeds, and telling the story to the daughters of Pelias, they beg her to do the same for their own father. So Medea changes an old ram back into a lamb, and wins their trust completely.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses7.html#2
Rejuvenation,
a Legendary Passage from,
Publius Ovidius Naso,
METAMORPHOSES BOOK 7,
trans. by BROOKES MORE,
[159] - [322]
REJUVENATION OF AESON
Now when the valiant Argonauts returned to Thessaly, their happy relatives, fathers and mothers, praised the living Gods; and with their hallowed gifts enhanced the flames with precious incense; and they offered Jove a sacred bullock, rich with gilded horns. But Jason's father, Aeson, came not down rejoicing to behold his son, for now worn out with many years, he waited death. And Jason to Medea grieving said: “Dearest, to whom my life and love are due, although your kindness has been great to me, and you have granted more than I should ask, yet one thing more I beg of you; if your enchantments can accomplish my desire, take from my life some years that I should live and add them to my father's ending days.”—And as he spoke he could not check his tears. Medea, moved by his affection, thought how much less she had grieved for her loved sire: and she replied:—“A wicked thing you ask! Can I be capable of using you in such a manner as to take your life and give it to another? Ask not me a thing so dreadful! May the Gods forbid! -- I will endeavor to perform for you a task much greater. By the powers of Night I will most certainly return to him the lost years of your father, but must not deprive you of your own.—Oh grant the power, great goddess of the triple form, that I may fail not to accomplish this great deed!”
Three nights were wanting for the moon to join her circling horns and form a perfect orb. When these were passed, the rounded light shone full and bright upon the earth.—Through the still night alone, Medea stole forth from the house with feet bare, and in flowing garment clothed—her long hair unadorned and not confined. Deep slumber has relaxed the world, and all that's living, animals and birds and men, and even the hedges and the breathing leaves are still—and motionless the laden air. Only the stars are twinkling, and to them she looks and beckons with imploring hands. Now thrice around she paces, and three times besprinkles her long hair with water dipt from crystal streams, which having done she kneels a moment on the cold, bare ground, and screaming three times calls upon the Night,— "O faithful Night, regard my mysteries! O golden-lighted Stars! O softly-moving Moon—genial, your fire succeeds the heated day! O Hecate! grave three-faced queen of these charms of enchanters and enchanters, arts! O fruitful Earth, giver of potent herbs! O gentle Breezes and destructive Winds! You Mountains, Rivers, Lakes and sacred Groves, and every dreaded god of silent Night! Attend upon me!—When my power commands, the rivers turn from their accustomed ways and roll far backward to their secret springs! I speak--and the wild, troubled sea is calm, and I command the waters to arise! The clouds I scatter—and I bring the clouds; I smooth the winds and ruffle up their rage; I weave my spells and I recite my charms; I pluck the fangs of serpents, and I move the living rocks and twist the rooted oaks; I blast the forests. Mountains at my word tremble and quake; and from her granite tombs the liberated ghosts arise as Earth astonished groans! From your appointed ways, O wonder-working Moon, I draw you down against the magic-making sound of gongs and brazen vessels of Temesa's ore; I cast my spells and veil the jeweled rays of Phoebus' wain, and quench Aurora's fires. At my command you tamed the flaming bulls which long disdained to bend beneath the yoke, until they pressed their necks against the plows; and, subject to my will, you raised up war till the strong company of dragon-birth were slaughtered as they fought amongst themselves; and, last, you lulled asleep the warden's eyes -- guards of the Golden Fleece—till then awake and sleeping never—so, deceiving him, you sent the treasure to the Grecian cities! Witness my need of super-natured herbs, elixirs potent to renew the years of age, giving the bloom of youth.—You shall not fail to grant me this; for not in vain the stars are flashing confirmation; not in vain the flying dragons, harnessed by their necks, from skies descending bring my chariot down.”
A chariot, sent from heaven, came to her—and soon as she had stroked the dragons' necks, and shaken in her hands the guiding reins—as soon as she had mounted, she was borne quickly above, through unresisting air. And, sailing over Thessaly, she saw the vale of Tempe, where the level soil is widely covered with a crumbling chalk—she turned her dragons towards new regions there: and she observed the herbs by Ossa born, the weeds on lofty Pelion, Othrys, Pindus and vast Olympus -- and from here she plucked the needed roots, or there, the blossoms clipped all with a moon-curved sickle made of brass—many the wild weeds by Apidanus, as well as blue Amphrysus' banks, she chose, and not escaped Enipeus from her search; Peneian stretches and Spercheian banks all yielded what she chose:—and Boebe's shore where sway the rushes; and she plucked up grass, a secret grass, from fair Euboean fields life-giving virtues in their waving blades, as yet unknown for transformation wrought on Glaucus.
All those fields she visited, with ceaseless diligence in quest of charms, nine days and nine nights sought strong herbs, and the swift dragons with their active wings, failed not to guide the chariot where she willed—until they reached her home. The dragons then had not been even touched by anything, except the odor of surrounding herbs, and yet they sloughed their skins, the growth of years. She would not cross the threshold of her home nor pass its gates; but, standing in the field, alone beneath the canopy of Heaven, she shunned all contact with her husband, while she built up from the ever-living turf two altars, one of which upon the right to Hecate was given, but the one upon the left was sacred then to you, O Hebe, goddess of eternal youth! Festooning woodland boughs and sweet vervain adorned these altars, near by which she dug as many trenches. Then, when all was done, she slaughtered a black ram, and sprinkled with blood the thirsty trenches; after which she poured from rich carchesian goblets generous wine and warm milk, grateful to propitious Gods—the Deities of earth on whom she called—entreating, as she did so, Pluto, lord of ghostly shades, and ravished Proserpine, that they should not, in undue haste, deprive her patient's aged limbs of life.
When certain she compelled the God's regard, assured her incantations and long prayers were both approved and heard, she bade her people bring out the body of her father-in-law—old Aeson's worn out body—and when she had buried him in a deep slumber by her spells, as if he were a dead man, she then stretched him out upon a bed of herbs. She ordered Jason and his servants thence, and warned them not to spy upon her rites, with eyes profane. As soon as they retired, Medea, with disheveled hair and wild abandon, as a Bacchanalian, paced times three around the blazing altars, while she dipped her torches, splintered at the top, into the trenches, dark: with blood, and lit the dipt ends in the sacred altar flames. Times three she purified the ancient man with flames, and thrice with water, and three times with sulphur,—as the boiling mixture seethed and bubbled in the brazen cauldron near. And into this, acerbic juices, roots, and flowers and seeds—from vales Hemonian—and mixed elixirs, into which she cast stones of strange virtue from the Orient, and sifted sands of ebbing ocean's tide; white hoar-frost, gathered when the moon was full, the nauseating flesh and luckless wings of the uncanny screech-owl, and the entrails from a mysterious animal that changed from wolf to man, from man to wolf again; the scaly sloughing of a water-snake, the medic liver of a long-lived stag, and the hard beak and head of an old crow which was alive nine centuries before; these, and a thousand nameless things the foreign sorceress prepared and mixed, and blended all together with a branch of peaceful olive, old and dry with years.—And while she stirred the withered olive branch in the hot mixture, it began to change from brown to green; and presently put forth new leaves, and soon was heavy with a wealth of luscious olives.—As the ever-rising fire threw bubbling froth beyond the cauldron's rim, the ground was covered with fresh verdure—flowers and all luxuriant grasses, and green plants.
Medea, when she saw this wonder took her unsheathed knife and cut the old man's throat; then, letting all his old blood out of him she filled his ancient veins with rich elixir. As he received it through his lips or wound, his beard and hair no longer white with age, turned quickly to their natural vigor, dark and lustrous; and his wasted form renewed, appeared in all the vigor of bright youth, no longer lean and sallow, for new blood coursed in his well-filled veins.—Astonished, when released from his deep sleep, and strong in youth, his memory assured him, such he was years four times ten before that day!—
Bacchus, from his celestial vantage saw this marvel, and convinced his nurses might then all regain their former vigor, he pled with Medea to restore their youth. The Colchian woman granted his request.
MEDEA AND PELIAS
But so her malice might be satisfied Medea feigned she had a quarrel with her husband, and for safety she had fled to Pelias. There, since the king himself was heavy with old age, his daughters gave her generous reception. And these girls the shrewd Medea in a short time won, by her false show of friendliness; and while among the most remarkable of her achievements she was telling how she had rejuvenated Aeson, and she dwelt particularly, on that strange event, these daughters were induced to hope that by some skill like this their father might regain his lost youth also. And they begged of her this boon, persuading her to name the price; no matter if it was large. She did not reply at once and seemed to hesitate, and so she held their fond minds in a deep suspense by her feigned meditation. When she had at length declared she would restore his youth, she said to them: “That you may have strong confidence in this my promised boon, the oldest leader of your flock of sheep shall be changed to a lamb again by my prized drugs.”
Straightway a wooly ram, worn out with length of untold years was brought, his great horns curved around his hollow temples. After she had cut his scrawny throat with her sharp knife Thessalian, barely staining it with his thin blood, Medea plunged his carcass in a bronze-made kettle, throwing in it at the same time juices of great potency. These made his body shrink and burnt away his two horns, and with horns his years. And now thin bleating was heard from within the pot; and even while they wondered at the sound, a lamb jumped out and frisking, ran away to find some udder with its needed milk.
Amazed the daughters looked on and, now that these promises had been performed, they urged more eagerly their first request.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses7.html#2
This passage continues with the death of Pelias and exile in Corinth, but our next passage previews an unhappy marriage in Medea's Letter to Jason.
Rejuvenation, from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Previously, the Argonauts returned home with the golden fleece, discovered old King Pelias had killed Jason's father, and then Medea tricked Pelias' daughters into killing him, thinking they were restoring his youth.
In this passage, Jason's father Aeson still lives, although quite old. At Jason's request, Medea flies on her dragons across Greece, searching for magic herbs to make Aeson young again.
She succeeds, and telling the story to the daughters of Pelias, they beg her to do the same for their own father. So Medea changes an old ram back into a lamb, and wins their trust completely.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses7.html#2
Rejuvenation,
a Legendary Passage from,
Publius Ovidius Naso,
METAMORPHOSES BOOK 7,
trans. by BROOKES MORE,
[159] - [322]
REJUVENATION OF AESON
Now when the valiant Argonauts returned to Thessaly, their happy relatives, fathers and mothers, praised the living Gods; and with their hallowed gifts enhanced the flames with precious incense; and they offered Jove a sacred bullock, rich with gilded horns. But Jason's father, Aeson, came not down rejoicing to behold his son, for now worn out with many years, he waited death. And Jason to Medea grieving said: “Dearest, to whom my life and love are due, although your kindness has been great to me, and you have granted more than I should ask, yet one thing more I beg of you; if your enchantments can accomplish my desire, take from my life some years that I should live and add them to my father's ending days.”—And as he spoke he could not check his tears. Medea, moved by his affection, thought how much less she had grieved for her loved sire: and she replied:—“A wicked thing you ask! Can I be capable of using you in such a manner as to take your life and give it to another? Ask not me a thing so dreadful! May the Gods forbid! -- I will endeavor to perform for you a task much greater. By the powers of Night I will most certainly return to him the lost years of your father, but must not deprive you of your own.—Oh grant the power, great goddess of the triple form, that I may fail not to accomplish this great deed!”
Three nights were wanting for the moon to join her circling horns and form a perfect orb. When these were passed, the rounded light shone full and bright upon the earth.—Through the still night alone, Medea stole forth from the house with feet bare, and in flowing garment clothed—her long hair unadorned and not confined. Deep slumber has relaxed the world, and all that's living, animals and birds and men, and even the hedges and the breathing leaves are still—and motionless the laden air. Only the stars are twinkling, and to them she looks and beckons with imploring hands. Now thrice around she paces, and three times besprinkles her long hair with water dipt from crystal streams, which having done she kneels a moment on the cold, bare ground, and screaming three times calls upon the Night,— "O faithful Night, regard my mysteries! O golden-lighted Stars! O softly-moving Moon—genial, your fire succeeds the heated day! O Hecate! grave three-faced queen of these charms of enchanters and enchanters, arts! O fruitful Earth, giver of potent herbs! O gentle Breezes and destructive Winds! You Mountains, Rivers, Lakes and sacred Groves, and every dreaded god of silent Night! Attend upon me!—When my power commands, the rivers turn from their accustomed ways and roll far backward to their secret springs! I speak--and the wild, troubled sea is calm, and I command the waters to arise! The clouds I scatter—and I bring the clouds; I smooth the winds and ruffle up their rage; I weave my spells and I recite my charms; I pluck the fangs of serpents, and I move the living rocks and twist the rooted oaks; I blast the forests. Mountains at my word tremble and quake; and from her granite tombs the liberated ghosts arise as Earth astonished groans! From your appointed ways, O wonder-working Moon, I draw you down against the magic-making sound of gongs and brazen vessels of Temesa's ore; I cast my spells and veil the jeweled rays of Phoebus' wain, and quench Aurora's fires. At my command you tamed the flaming bulls which long disdained to bend beneath the yoke, until they pressed their necks against the plows; and, subject to my will, you raised up war till the strong company of dragon-birth were slaughtered as they fought amongst themselves; and, last, you lulled asleep the warden's eyes -- guards of the Golden Fleece—till then awake and sleeping never—so, deceiving him, you sent the treasure to the Grecian cities! Witness my need of super-natured herbs, elixirs potent to renew the years of age, giving the bloom of youth.—You shall not fail to grant me this; for not in vain the stars are flashing confirmation; not in vain the flying dragons, harnessed by their necks, from skies descending bring my chariot down.”
A chariot, sent from heaven, came to her—and soon as she had stroked the dragons' necks, and shaken in her hands the guiding reins—as soon as she had mounted, she was borne quickly above, through unresisting air. And, sailing over Thessaly, she saw the vale of Tempe, where the level soil is widely covered with a crumbling chalk—she turned her dragons towards new regions there: and she observed the herbs by Ossa born, the weeds on lofty Pelion, Othrys, Pindus and vast Olympus -- and from here she plucked the needed roots, or there, the blossoms clipped all with a moon-curved sickle made of brass—many the wild weeds by Apidanus, as well as blue Amphrysus' banks, she chose, and not escaped Enipeus from her search; Peneian stretches and Spercheian banks all yielded what she chose:—and Boebe's shore where sway the rushes; and she plucked up grass, a secret grass, from fair Euboean fields life-giving virtues in their waving blades, as yet unknown for transformation wrought on Glaucus.
All those fields she visited, with ceaseless diligence in quest of charms, nine days and nine nights sought strong herbs, and the swift dragons with their active wings, failed not to guide the chariot where she willed—until they reached her home. The dragons then had not been even touched by anything, except the odor of surrounding herbs, and yet they sloughed their skins, the growth of years. She would not cross the threshold of her home nor pass its gates; but, standing in the field, alone beneath the canopy of Heaven, she shunned all contact with her husband, while she built up from the ever-living turf two altars, one of which upon the right to Hecate was given, but the one upon the left was sacred then to you, O Hebe, goddess of eternal youth! Festooning woodland boughs and sweet vervain adorned these altars, near by which she dug as many trenches. Then, when all was done, she slaughtered a black ram, and sprinkled with blood the thirsty trenches; after which she poured from rich carchesian goblets generous wine and warm milk, grateful to propitious Gods—the Deities of earth on whom she called—entreating, as she did so, Pluto, lord of ghostly shades, and ravished Proserpine, that they should not, in undue haste, deprive her patient's aged limbs of life.
When certain she compelled the God's regard, assured her incantations and long prayers were both approved and heard, she bade her people bring out the body of her father-in-law—old Aeson's worn out body—and when she had buried him in a deep slumber by her spells, as if he were a dead man, she then stretched him out upon a bed of herbs. She ordered Jason and his servants thence, and warned them not to spy upon her rites, with eyes profane. As soon as they retired, Medea, with disheveled hair and wild abandon, as a Bacchanalian, paced times three around the blazing altars, while she dipped her torches, splintered at the top, into the trenches, dark: with blood, and lit the dipt ends in the sacred altar flames. Times three she purified the ancient man with flames, and thrice with water, and three times with sulphur,—as the boiling mixture seethed and bubbled in the brazen cauldron near. And into this, acerbic juices, roots, and flowers and seeds—from vales Hemonian—and mixed elixirs, into which she cast stones of strange virtue from the Orient, and sifted sands of ebbing ocean's tide; white hoar-frost, gathered when the moon was full, the nauseating flesh and luckless wings of the uncanny screech-owl, and the entrails from a mysterious animal that changed from wolf to man, from man to wolf again; the scaly sloughing of a water-snake, the medic liver of a long-lived stag, and the hard beak and head of an old crow which was alive nine centuries before; these, and a thousand nameless things the foreign sorceress prepared and mixed, and blended all together with a branch of peaceful olive, old and dry with years.—And while she stirred the withered olive branch in the hot mixture, it began to change from brown to green; and presently put forth new leaves, and soon was heavy with a wealth of luscious olives.—As the ever-rising fire threw bubbling froth beyond the cauldron's rim, the ground was covered with fresh verdure—flowers and all luxuriant grasses, and green plants.
Medea, when she saw this wonder took her unsheathed knife and cut the old man's throat; then, letting all his old blood out of him she filled his ancient veins with rich elixir. As he received it through his lips or wound, his beard and hair no longer white with age, turned quickly to their natural vigor, dark and lustrous; and his wasted form renewed, appeared in all the vigor of bright youth, no longer lean and sallow, for new blood coursed in his well-filled veins.—Astonished, when released from his deep sleep, and strong in youth, his memory assured him, such he was years four times ten before that day!—
Bacchus, from his celestial vantage saw this marvel, and convinced his nurses might then all regain their former vigor, he pled with Medea to restore their youth. The Colchian woman granted his request.
MEDEA AND PELIAS
But so her malice might be satisfied Medea feigned she had a quarrel with her husband, and for safety she had fled to Pelias. There, since the king himself was heavy with old age, his daughters gave her generous reception. And these girls the shrewd Medea in a short time won, by her false show of friendliness; and while among the most remarkable of her achievements she was telling how she had rejuvenated Aeson, and she dwelt particularly, on that strange event, these daughters were induced to hope that by some skill like this their father might regain his lost youth also. And they begged of her this boon, persuading her to name the price; no matter if it was large. She did not reply at once and seemed to hesitate, and so she held their fond minds in a deep suspense by her feigned meditation. When she had at length declared she would restore his youth, she said to them: “That you may have strong confidence in this my promised boon, the oldest leader of your flock of sheep shall be changed to a lamb again by my prized drugs.”
Straightway a wooly ram, worn out with length of untold years was brought, his great horns curved around his hollow temples. After she had cut his scrawny throat with her sharp knife Thessalian, barely staining it with his thin blood, Medea plunged his carcass in a bronze-made kettle, throwing in it at the same time juices of great potency. These made his body shrink and burnt away his two horns, and with horns his years. And now thin bleating was heard from within the pot; and even while they wondered at the sound, a lamb jumped out and frisking, ran away to find some udder with its needed milk.
Amazed the daughters looked on and, now that these promises had been performed, they urged more eagerly their first request.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses7.html#2
This passage continues with the death of Pelias and exile in Corinth, but our next passage previews an unhappy marriage in Medea's Letter to Jason.
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
LP0086 -XII ARGONAUTS- The Return of the Argo, from Diodorus
Legendary Passages #0086 -XII ARGONAUTS-
The Return of the Argo, from Diodorus.
Previously, the Argonauts rescued King Laomedon's daughter from the Trojan sea-monster, and suffered casualties escaping with the golden fleece. In this passage they are rescued by the sea-god Glaucus, return to King Laomedon for rewards, and Medea avenges Jason's family against King Pelias.
After setting sail with the fleece, Orpheus prays for an end to the savage storms. The sea-god Glaucus guides them to safety and tells them their fortunes.
When they arrive at Troy, Hercules sends some argonauts to pick up the princess and the magic mares. Naturally, King Laomedon throws them in jail, but prince Priam snuck in swords and they fought their way out. Laomedon is killed, and Priam rules as king until the Trojan War.
At home in Thessaly, King Pelias kills Jason's entire family. The argonauts plot their revenge, but Medea comes up with the plan. She dresses as an old woman, tricks her way into the palace, uses magic to become young again, and says she can do the same for Pelias. He agrees, and she tricks his daughters into killing their own father.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/DiodorusSiculus4C.html#11
The Return of the Argo,
a Legendary Passage from,
DIODORUS SICULUS,
LIBRARY OF HISTORY,
BOOK IV. Sections 48 - 52,
trans. by C. H. OLDFATHER.
[4.48.5] - [4.52.2]
There were wounded among the chieftains Jason, Laërtes, Atalantê, and the sons of Thespius, as they are called. However they were all healed in a few days, they say, by Medea by means of roots and provision for themselves, set out to sea, and they had already reached the middle of the Pontic sea when they ran into a storm which put them in the greatest peril.
THE ARGONAUTS AND GLAUCUS
But when Orpheus, as on the former occasion, offered up prayers to the deities of Samothrace, the winds ceased and there appeared near the ship Glaucus the Sea-god, as he is called. The god accompanied the ship in its voyage without ceasing for two days and night and foretold to Heracles his Labours and immortality, and to the Tyndaridae that they should be called Dioscori (“Sons of Zeus”) and receive at the hands of all mankind honour like that offered to the gods.
And, in general, he addressed all the Argonauts by name and told them that because of the prayers of Orpheus he had appeared in accordance with a Providence of the gods and was showing forth to them what was destined to take place; and he counseled them, accordingly, that so soon as they touched land they should pay their vows to the gods through the intervention of whom they had twice already been saved.
After this, the account continues, Glaucus sank back beneath the deep, and the Argonauts, arriving at the mouth of the Pontus, put in to the land, the king of the country being at that time Byzas, after whom the city of Byzantium was named.
There they set up altars, and when they had paid their vows to the gods they sanctified the place, which is even to this day held in honour by the sailors who pass by.
HERACLES AND LAOMEDON
After this they put out to sea, and after sailing through the Propontis and Hellespont they landed at the Troad. Here, when Heracles dispatched to the city his brother Iphiclus and Telamon to demand back both the mares and Hesionê, Laomedon, it is said, threw the ambassadors into prison and planned to lay an ambush for the other Argonauts and encompass their death. He had the rest of his sons as willing aids in the deed, but Priam alone opposed it; for he declared that Laomedon should observe justice in his dealings with the strangers and should deliver to them both his sister and the mares which had been promised.
But when no one paid any heed to Priam, he brought two swords to the prison, they say, and gave them secretly to Telamon and his companions, and by disclosing the plan of his father he became the cause of their deliverance.
For immediately Telamon and his companions slew such of the guards as offered resistance, and fleeing to the sea gave the Argonauts a full account of what had happened. Accordingly, these got ready for battle and went out to meet the forces which were pouring out of the city with the king.
There was a sharp battle, but their courage gave the chieftains the upper hand, and Heracles, the myths report, performed the bravest feasts of them all; for he slew Laomedon, and taking the city at the first assault he punished those who were parties with the king to the plot, but to Priam, because of the spirit of justice he had shown, he gave the kingship, entered in to a league of friendship with him, and then sailed away in company with the Argonauts.
But certain of the ancient poets have handed down the account that Heracles took Troy, not with the aid of the Argonauts, but on a campaign of his own with six ships, in order to get the mares; and Homer also adds his witness to this version in the following lines:
Aye, what a man, they say, was Heracles in might, my father he, steadfast, with heart of lion, who once came here to carry of the mares of King Laomedon, with but six ships and scantier men, yet sacked he then the city of proud Ilium, and made her streets bereft.
But the Argonauts, they say, set forth from the Troad and arrived at Samothrace, where they again paid their vows to the great gods and dedicated in the sacred precinct the bowls which are preserved there even to this day.
MEDEA AND THE DEATH OF PELIAS
While the return of the chieftains was as yet not known in Thessaly, a rumour, they say, went the rounds there that all the companions of Jason in the expedition had perished in the region of the Pontus. Consequently Pelias, thinking that an occasion was now come to do away with all who were waiting for the throne, forced the father of Jason to drink the blood of a bull, and murdered his brother Promachus, who was still a mere lad in years.
But Amphinomê, his mother, they say, when on the point of being slain, performed a manly deed and one worthy of mention; for fleeing to the hearth of the king she pronounced a curse against him, to the effect that he might suffer the fate which his impious deeds merited, and then, striking her own breast with a sword, she ended her life heroically.
But as for Pelias, when he had utterly destroyed in this fashion all the relatives of Jason, he speedily received the punishment befitting his impious deeds. For Jason, who had sailed that night into a roadstead which lay not far from Iolcus and yet was not in sight of the dwellers in the city, learned from one of the country-folk of the misfortunes which had befallen his kinsmen.
Now all the chieftains stood ready to lend Jason their aid and to face any peril on his behalf, but they fell into dispute over how they should make the attack; some, for instance, advised that they force their way at once into the city and fall upon the king while he was not expecting them, but certain others declared that each one of them should gather soldiers from his own birthplace and then raise a general war; since it was impossible, they maintained, for fifty-three men to overcome a king who controlled an army and important cities.
While they were in this perplexity Medea, it is said, promised to slay Pelias all alone by means of cunning and to deliver to the chieftains the royal palace without their running any risk.
And when they all expressed astonishment at her statement and sought to learn what sort of a scheme she had in mind, she said that she had brought with her many drugs of marvelous potency which had been discovered by her mother Hecatê and by her sister Circê; and though before this time she had never used them to destroy human beings, on this occasion she would by means of them easily wreak vengeance upon men who were deserving of punishment.
Then, after disclosing beforehand to the chieftains the detailed plans of the attack she would make, she promised them that she would give them a signal from the palace during the day by means of smoke, during the night by fire, in the direction of the look-out which stood high above the sea.
Then Medea, the tale goes on, fashioning a hollow image of Artemis secreted in it drugs of diverse natures, and as for herself, she anointed her hair with certain potent ointments and made it grey, and filled her face and body so full of wrinkles that all who looked upon her thought that she was surely an old woman. And finally, taking with her the statue of the goddess which had been so made as to strike with terror the superstitious populace and move it to fear of the gods, at daybreak she entered the city.
She acted like one inspired, and as the multitude rushed together along the streets she summoned the whole people to receive the goddess with reverence, telling them that the goddess had come to them from the Hyperboreans to bring good luck to both the whole city and the king.
And while all the inhabitants were rendering obeisance to the goddess and honouring her with sacrifices, and the whole city, in a word, was, along with Medea herself, acting like people inspired, she entered the palace, and there she threw Pelias into such a state of superstitious fear and, by her magic arts, so terrified his daughters that they believed that the goddess was actually there in person to bring prosperity to the house of the king.
For she declared that Artemis, riding through the air upon a chariot drawn by dragons, had flown in the air over many parts of the inhabited earth and had chosen out the realm of the most pious king in all the world for the establishment of her own worship and for honours which should be for ever and ever; and that the goddess had commanded her not only to divest Pelias, by means of certain power which she possessed, of his old age and make his body entirely young, but also to bestow upon him many other gifts, to the end that his life should be blessed and pleasing to the gods.
The king was filled with amazement at these astonishing proposals, but Medea, we are informed, promised him that then and there, in the case of her own body, she would furnish the proof of what she had said. Then she told one of the daughters of Pelias to bring pure water, and when the maiden at once cried out her request, she shut herself up, they say, in a small chamber and washing thoroughly her whole body she made it clean of the potent influences of the drugs. Being restored, then, to her former condition, and showing herself to the king, she amazed those who gazed upon her, and they thought that a kind of Providence of the gods had transformed her old age into a maiden’s youth and striking beauty.
Also, by means of certain drugs, Medea caused shapes of the dragons to appear, which she declared had brought the goddess through the air from the Hyperboreans to make her stay with Pelias. And since the deeds which Medea had performed appeared to be too great for mortal nature, and the king saw fit to regard her with great approval and, in a word, believed that she was telling the truth, she now, they say, in private conversation with Pelias urged him to order his daughters to co-operate with her and to do whatever she might command them; for it was fitting, she Said, that the king’s body should receive the favour which the gods were according to him through the hands, not of servants, but of his own children.
Consequently Pelias gave explicit directions to his daughters to do everything that Medea might command them with respect to the body of their father, and the maidens were quite ready to carry out her orders.
Medea then, the story relates, when night had come and Pelias had fallen asleep, informed the daughters that it was required that the body of Pelias be boiled in a cauldron. But when the maidens received the proposal with hostility, she devised a second proof that what she said could be believed. For there was a ram full of years which was kept in their home, and she announced to the maidens that she would first boil it and thus make it into a lamb again.
When they agreed to this, we are told that Medea severed it apart limb by limb, boiled the ram’s body, and then, working a deception by means of certain drugs, she drew out of the cauldron an image which looked like a lamb. Thereupon the maidens were astounded, and were so convinced that they had received all possible proofs that she could do what she was promising that they carried out her orders. All the rest of them beat their father to death, but Alcestis alone, because of her great piety, would not lay hands upon him who had begotten her.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/DiodorusSiculus4C.html#11
This passage continues with the disbanding of the Argonauts, but our next passage gives another version of Medea's magical rejuvenation.
The Return of the Argo, from Diodorus.
Previously, the Argonauts rescued King Laomedon's daughter from the Trojan sea-monster, and suffered casualties escaping with the golden fleece. In this passage they are rescued by the sea-god Glaucus, return to King Laomedon for rewards, and Medea avenges Jason's family against King Pelias.
After setting sail with the fleece, Orpheus prays for an end to the savage storms. The sea-god Glaucus guides them to safety and tells them their fortunes.
When they arrive at Troy, Hercules sends some argonauts to pick up the princess and the magic mares. Naturally, King Laomedon throws them in jail, but prince Priam snuck in swords and they fought their way out. Laomedon is killed, and Priam rules as king until the Trojan War.
At home in Thessaly, King Pelias kills Jason's entire family. The argonauts plot their revenge, but Medea comes up with the plan. She dresses as an old woman, tricks her way into the palace, uses magic to become young again, and says she can do the same for Pelias. He agrees, and she tricks his daughters into killing their own father.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/DiodorusSiculus4C.html#11
The Return of the Argo,
a Legendary Passage from,
DIODORUS SICULUS,
LIBRARY OF HISTORY,
BOOK IV. Sections 48 - 52,
trans. by C. H. OLDFATHER.
[4.48.5] - [4.52.2]
There were wounded among the chieftains Jason, Laërtes, Atalantê, and the sons of Thespius, as they are called. However they were all healed in a few days, they say, by Medea by means of roots and provision for themselves, set out to sea, and they had already reached the middle of the Pontic sea when they ran into a storm which put them in the greatest peril.
THE ARGONAUTS AND GLAUCUS
But when Orpheus, as on the former occasion, offered up prayers to the deities of Samothrace, the winds ceased and there appeared near the ship Glaucus the Sea-god, as he is called. The god accompanied the ship in its voyage without ceasing for two days and night and foretold to Heracles his Labours and immortality, and to the Tyndaridae that they should be called Dioscori (“Sons of Zeus”) and receive at the hands of all mankind honour like that offered to the gods.
And, in general, he addressed all the Argonauts by name and told them that because of the prayers of Orpheus he had appeared in accordance with a Providence of the gods and was showing forth to them what was destined to take place; and he counseled them, accordingly, that so soon as they touched land they should pay their vows to the gods through the intervention of whom they had twice already been saved.
After this, the account continues, Glaucus sank back beneath the deep, and the Argonauts, arriving at the mouth of the Pontus, put in to the land, the king of the country being at that time Byzas, after whom the city of Byzantium was named.
There they set up altars, and when they had paid their vows to the gods they sanctified the place, which is even to this day held in honour by the sailors who pass by.
HERACLES AND LAOMEDON
After this they put out to sea, and after sailing through the Propontis and Hellespont they landed at the Troad. Here, when Heracles dispatched to the city his brother Iphiclus and Telamon to demand back both the mares and Hesionê, Laomedon, it is said, threw the ambassadors into prison and planned to lay an ambush for the other Argonauts and encompass their death. He had the rest of his sons as willing aids in the deed, but Priam alone opposed it; for he declared that Laomedon should observe justice in his dealings with the strangers and should deliver to them both his sister and the mares which had been promised.
But when no one paid any heed to Priam, he brought two swords to the prison, they say, and gave them secretly to Telamon and his companions, and by disclosing the plan of his father he became the cause of their deliverance.
For immediately Telamon and his companions slew such of the guards as offered resistance, and fleeing to the sea gave the Argonauts a full account of what had happened. Accordingly, these got ready for battle and went out to meet the forces which were pouring out of the city with the king.
There was a sharp battle, but their courage gave the chieftains the upper hand, and Heracles, the myths report, performed the bravest feasts of them all; for he slew Laomedon, and taking the city at the first assault he punished those who were parties with the king to the plot, but to Priam, because of the spirit of justice he had shown, he gave the kingship, entered in to a league of friendship with him, and then sailed away in company with the Argonauts.
But certain of the ancient poets have handed down the account that Heracles took Troy, not with the aid of the Argonauts, but on a campaign of his own with six ships, in order to get the mares; and Homer also adds his witness to this version in the following lines:
Aye, what a man, they say, was Heracles in might, my father he, steadfast, with heart of lion, who once came here to carry of the mares of King Laomedon, with but six ships and scantier men, yet sacked he then the city of proud Ilium, and made her streets bereft.
But the Argonauts, they say, set forth from the Troad and arrived at Samothrace, where they again paid their vows to the great gods and dedicated in the sacred precinct the bowls which are preserved there even to this day.
MEDEA AND THE DEATH OF PELIAS
While the return of the chieftains was as yet not known in Thessaly, a rumour, they say, went the rounds there that all the companions of Jason in the expedition had perished in the region of the Pontus. Consequently Pelias, thinking that an occasion was now come to do away with all who were waiting for the throne, forced the father of Jason to drink the blood of a bull, and murdered his brother Promachus, who was still a mere lad in years.
But Amphinomê, his mother, they say, when on the point of being slain, performed a manly deed and one worthy of mention; for fleeing to the hearth of the king she pronounced a curse against him, to the effect that he might suffer the fate which his impious deeds merited, and then, striking her own breast with a sword, she ended her life heroically.
But as for Pelias, when he had utterly destroyed in this fashion all the relatives of Jason, he speedily received the punishment befitting his impious deeds. For Jason, who had sailed that night into a roadstead which lay not far from Iolcus and yet was not in sight of the dwellers in the city, learned from one of the country-folk of the misfortunes which had befallen his kinsmen.
Now all the chieftains stood ready to lend Jason their aid and to face any peril on his behalf, but they fell into dispute over how they should make the attack; some, for instance, advised that they force their way at once into the city and fall upon the king while he was not expecting them, but certain others declared that each one of them should gather soldiers from his own birthplace and then raise a general war; since it was impossible, they maintained, for fifty-three men to overcome a king who controlled an army and important cities.
While they were in this perplexity Medea, it is said, promised to slay Pelias all alone by means of cunning and to deliver to the chieftains the royal palace without their running any risk.
And when they all expressed astonishment at her statement and sought to learn what sort of a scheme she had in mind, she said that she had brought with her many drugs of marvelous potency which had been discovered by her mother Hecatê and by her sister Circê; and though before this time she had never used them to destroy human beings, on this occasion she would by means of them easily wreak vengeance upon men who were deserving of punishment.
Then, after disclosing beforehand to the chieftains the detailed plans of the attack she would make, she promised them that she would give them a signal from the palace during the day by means of smoke, during the night by fire, in the direction of the look-out which stood high above the sea.
Then Medea, the tale goes on, fashioning a hollow image of Artemis secreted in it drugs of diverse natures, and as for herself, she anointed her hair with certain potent ointments and made it grey, and filled her face and body so full of wrinkles that all who looked upon her thought that she was surely an old woman. And finally, taking with her the statue of the goddess which had been so made as to strike with terror the superstitious populace and move it to fear of the gods, at daybreak she entered the city.
She acted like one inspired, and as the multitude rushed together along the streets she summoned the whole people to receive the goddess with reverence, telling them that the goddess had come to them from the Hyperboreans to bring good luck to both the whole city and the king.
And while all the inhabitants were rendering obeisance to the goddess and honouring her with sacrifices, and the whole city, in a word, was, along with Medea herself, acting like people inspired, she entered the palace, and there she threw Pelias into such a state of superstitious fear and, by her magic arts, so terrified his daughters that they believed that the goddess was actually there in person to bring prosperity to the house of the king.
For she declared that Artemis, riding through the air upon a chariot drawn by dragons, had flown in the air over many parts of the inhabited earth and had chosen out the realm of the most pious king in all the world for the establishment of her own worship and for honours which should be for ever and ever; and that the goddess had commanded her not only to divest Pelias, by means of certain power which she possessed, of his old age and make his body entirely young, but also to bestow upon him many other gifts, to the end that his life should be blessed and pleasing to the gods.
The king was filled with amazement at these astonishing proposals, but Medea, we are informed, promised him that then and there, in the case of her own body, she would furnish the proof of what she had said. Then she told one of the daughters of Pelias to bring pure water, and when the maiden at once cried out her request, she shut herself up, they say, in a small chamber and washing thoroughly her whole body she made it clean of the potent influences of the drugs. Being restored, then, to her former condition, and showing herself to the king, she amazed those who gazed upon her, and they thought that a kind of Providence of the gods had transformed her old age into a maiden’s youth and striking beauty.
Also, by means of certain drugs, Medea caused shapes of the dragons to appear, which she declared had brought the goddess through the air from the Hyperboreans to make her stay with Pelias. And since the deeds which Medea had performed appeared to be too great for mortal nature, and the king saw fit to regard her with great approval and, in a word, believed that she was telling the truth, she now, they say, in private conversation with Pelias urged him to order his daughters to co-operate with her and to do whatever she might command them; for it was fitting, she Said, that the king’s body should receive the favour which the gods were according to him through the hands, not of servants, but of his own children.
Consequently Pelias gave explicit directions to his daughters to do everything that Medea might command them with respect to the body of their father, and the maidens were quite ready to carry out her orders.
Medea then, the story relates, when night had come and Pelias had fallen asleep, informed the daughters that it was required that the body of Pelias be boiled in a cauldron. But when the maidens received the proposal with hostility, she devised a second proof that what she said could be believed. For there was a ram full of years which was kept in their home, and she announced to the maidens that she would first boil it and thus make it into a lamb again.
When they agreed to this, we are told that Medea severed it apart limb by limb, boiled the ram’s body, and then, working a deception by means of certain drugs, she drew out of the cauldron an image which looked like a lamb. Thereupon the maidens were astounded, and were so convinced that they had received all possible proofs that she could do what she was promising that they carried out her orders. All the rest of them beat their father to death, but Alcestis alone, because of her great piety, would not lay hands upon him who had begotten her.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/DiodorusSiculus4C.html#11
This passage continues with the disbanding of the Argonauts, but our next passage gives another version of Medea's magical rejuvenation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)