Seneca: Thyestes
-[ACT I: Tantali Umbra – Furia][Tantali Umbra – The Shade of Tantalus]
[1] Who from the ill-omened seat of the lower regions drags forth the one chasing after food that flees before his greedy mouth, who again so wickedly reveals the living homes of the Gods to Tantalus. Is there some discovery [5] worse than parched thirst among waves (water) or eternal ete rnal gaping hunger? Does some slippery stone of Sisyphus come that must be carried on my shoulders, or a wheel with its swift course spreading the limbs, or a punishment of Tityus, who, exposed on a vast cave, [10] feeds the dark birds with gouged-out flesh and replenishing at night what was lost during the day, lies as full nourishment for the new monster? Into which evil am I conveyed? O which harsh Judge from the shades distributes new punishments to the dead, [15] if something can be added to the punishments which the guard himself of the dreadful prison would shudder at, which mourning Acheron would be fearful of, at the fear of which we also tremble, seek it; now from my offspring a riotous crowd arises, which will conquer its own race [20] and make me innocent and will attempt at tempt things undared. Whatever place in the impious region is free, I will fill up; never, with the house of Pelops standing, will Minos be idle.
[Furia – Furies]
Go on, detestable shade, and drive the impious penates with rage. [25] Let the struggle be carried on in every crime and let the sword be drawn by/in turns. Let there be no limit of angers or shame, let wicked madness flow into the minds, the rage of the fathers endures e ndures and let long-lasting evil pass into the descendents. Let no one have leisure to feel [30] hatred at an old crime; always let it rise new, many in one, and, while it punishes, let wickedness rise. Let the kingdoms fall away from the haughty brothers
and may they seek out the fugitives; let the wavering fortune of the violent house fall between uncertain kings; [35] let misery come from power, power from misery and, having fallen, let it bear/ lift the kingdom with an incessant wave. Those having been driven away on account of the crime, when the God gives back their fatherland, let them return to crime and let them be hated by all as much as by themselves. Let there be no anger which thinks anything forbidden. [40] Let the brother fear the brother and the father fear the son and the son fear the father; let their children die evilly, yet more evilly born; let a murderous wife be threatening to her husband, let them convey/ carry the wars across the sea, let the spilled blood irrigate all the lands, [45] and let pleasure, victorious, exult over the great kings of the races; let the stuprum be the lightest crime in this impious house; let divine law and faith and justice all perish. Let heaven not be free from ours sins; why do the stars twinkle in the sky [50] and the flames guard the glory owed to the world? May the night be deep and may the day fall from the sky. Mix the penates, call on hatred, murder, funerals and fill up the whole house with Tantalus. Let the high column be furnished and the happy [55] threshold grow green with laurel, let the honorable fire shine upon your arrival; let a Thracian crime be of a large number. Why does the uncle’s hand lie idle? [Thyestes does not yet mourn his sons;] Will he ever raise it? Now with supplied fires, [60] the cauldrons boil, let the torn limbs go (in) by pieces, let the blood pollute the paternal hearths, let the courses be put in; may you not come as a guest with your new evils. We gave the free day and we resolve your hunger to those tables. [65] Fill up thirst, may the blood mixed in wine be drunk with you watching; I found a feast which you yourself would flee. Stay, to where do you rush headfirst?
[Tantali Umbra]
To the lakes and rivers and receding waters and to the fleeings of the full tree from my very lips. [70] May it be allowed for me to return to the darkness of my wicked prison, let it be allowed, if I seem insufficiently wretched, remove the riverbanks; let me be forgotten in the midde of your cave, Phlegethon, surrounded by a sea of fire. Whichever of you are ordered to suffer the penalties
[75] that are given by the law of the fates, whoever lies in fear under an empty cave and fears the fall of the just now coming mountain, whoever shudders at the wild open mouths of greedy lions and, having been involved, at the ill-omened herds of the Furies, whoever, being half-burnt, [80] drives away the sent torches, listen to the voice of Tantalus hastening to you all; believe me who knows, love the punishments. When will it befall me to flee to the upper regions?
[Furia]
Beforehand, disturb the house and bring in battles with you and the evil love of iron [85] to kings, strike the wild chest with a maddening illness.
[Tantali Umbra]
It is proper for me to suffer punishments, not to be a punishment. Am I sent as an awful vapor from the ruptured earth or as a plague about to spread a grave sickness upon the people? Will I, as a grandfather, lead my descendents [90] into horrendous crime? Great father of the Gods and me, however much he might feel shame, although it be permitted that my loquacious tongue be tortured and judged worthy of great punishment, I will not be silent in this place; I stay, do not violate the hand with accused slaughter nor scatter the altars with [95] evil rage. I will stay and prevent crime – why with a whip do you frighten my eyes and, ferocious, threaten the entwined snakes? What fixed hunger do you cause/ drive in the deepest bones? The inflamed heart burns with thirst and the flame shines with burnt flesh. [100] I follow.
[Furia]
Divide this, this fury into the whole house; Thus, thus let the hostile ones be borne in turn and let then be thirsty for your blood. The house senses your entrance and shudders utterly at the wicked touch. [105] The deed is abundant. Walk to the infernal caves and the famous river; now the mourning earth bears
your walk. Do you discern how, driven within the earth, the fluid leaves the streams, how the riverbanks are empty and the fiery wind bears the rare clouds? [110] Each tree grows pale and the branch stands naked with the fruit having fled, and where the isthmus groans on this side and that with the nearby waves, dividing the nearby shallow waters with slender land, the sides hear from afar the receding sounds. [115] Now Lerna falls back and the veins of Phoroneus lie hidden and sacred Alpheus does not produce his waves and the ridges of Cithaeron stand white in no part with the snow having been put off and famous Argos fears the old thirst. Titan himself is uncertain whether to command to follow [120] and collects with reins the day about to perish.
[Chorus is Skipped]
-[ACT II: Atreus – Satelles]-
[Atreus]
Lazy, unskillful, weak and, what I believe the most shameful in the so great matters of a tyrant, unavenged; after all the crimes, after the trickery of the brother, and all divine law broken, do you, enraged Atreus, [180] act only with empty complaints? Now, the whole world should have been resounding with your weapons and your fleets should have been stirring up the twin seas from either side, already it should have been that the fields and cities shine with flames and the drawn swords flashing everywhere. Let the whole ground of the Argives resound [185] underneath our horsemen; let no forests cover the enemy nor the citadels built on the high ridges of the mountains; let the whole population sing of war with Mycenae having been abandoned; whoever covers and looks upon the hated head, may he fall with deadly injury. [190] Let this powerful house itself of famous Pelops collapse even on me, so long as it falls on my brother. Go one, spirit, do what no future generation will approve, but non will be silent about. Some crime must be dared, atrocious, bloody, the kind that my brother would wish [195] to be his own. You will not avenge his wrongs,
unless you outdo it. And what is able to be so savage which might surpass him? Surely, he does not lie downcast? Surely in favorable matters he does not endure a limit, or quiet in adverse conditions? I know the unteachable nature [200] of man; it is not able to be bent – but it is able to be broken. Then before he strengthens himself or prepares his powers, let him be attacked first, lest he attack me resting. Either he will destroy, or he will perish; the crime is placed in the middle for the one who gets there first.
[Satelles] Doesn’t the hostile opinion of the people terrify you at all?
[Atreus]
[205] The greatest good of kingship is this: the people are compelled both to bear and to praise the deeds of their own master.
[Satelles]
Whom fear forces to praise, fear makes the same ones hostile; but he who seeks the glory of true favor, [210] he will wish to be praised in spirit more than in word.
[Atreus]
True praise often will extend even to the lowly man, false praise happens only to the powerful. Let them will what they do not wish.
[Satelles]
Let the king want honorable things; nobody will not wish the same.
[Atreus]
When only the honorable things are permitted for the one ruling, it is ruled upon request.
[Satelles]
[215] Where this is no shame, no care of right, sanctity, piety, no faith, the kingdom is unstable.
[Atreus]
Sanctity, piety, faith: these are private goods; let kings go where it pleases them.
[Satelles]
Believe that to harm even an evil brother is a crime.
[Atreus]
[220] Whatever is right in the case of this man is evil in the case of a brother. For what indeed has he left untouched by crime or where has he refrained from wickedness? He stole my wife by dishonor and my kingdom by stealth, he obtained, by fraud, the ancient token of our empire, by fraud he disturbed the house. [225] In the lofty dwellings of Pelops is a noble beast, a secret ram, the leader of a wealthy flock. Throughout his whole body, with poured out gold, hair falls, from his back the new kings of Tantalus wear golden scepters; [230] the owner of him rules, the fortune of the whole house follows this one. The sacred one grazes in a part of safe meadows having been set aside, the pasture of which a fateful rock, covering, encloses with a stone wall. Daring a great crime, the treacherous one carries off this one [235] with the partner of my bed accepting the crime. From this cause, all evil of mutual disaster flows; I wandered, restless, through my kingdoms as an exile, there is no part, free from traps, for my race, my wife corrupt, the faith of my rule shaken, [240] the home sick, the blood is uncertain. Nothing is certain, except that my brother is my enemy. Why are you stunned? Begin, at last, and take up the spirits. Behold Tantalus and Pelops; my hands are are punished by these examples. Speak, by which path might I punish that hateful head.
[Satelles]
[245] Destroyed by the sword, let him spit out his hostile spirit.
[Atreus]
You speak about the end of punishment; I desire punishment. Let the gentle tyrant kill; in my kingdom, death is achieved.
[Satelles]
Does pitery not move you at all?
[Atreus]
Withdraw, piety, if in fact you ever were in our [250] house. Let the dreadful band of Furies and discordant Erinys come and Megaera shaking her twin torches. My chest does not burn with a great enough fury, it pleases to be filled with a great monster.
[Satelles]
What new things do you plan, maddened?
[Atreus]
[255] Nothing which the bound of accustomed suffering may grasp; I will leave no deed and no (deed) is enough.
[Satelles]
The sword?
[Atreus]
It is too little. [Satelles]
What of fire?
[Atreus]
Even now that is too little.
[Satelles]
What weapon indeed does so great grief use?
[Atreus]
Thyestes himself.
[Satelles]
This evil is worse than anger.
[Atreus]
[260] I confess. I stunned uproar shakes the chest and turns inside; I am carried off and I do not know where, but I am carried off. The ground bellows from its deepest foundations, the calm day resounds and the house, as if fractured in the whole roof, creaks and the moved/ disturbed Lares turn [265] their faces – let this happen, let the wickedness happen which you, Gods, fear.
[Satelles]
What do you finally prepare to do?
[Atreus]
I do not know what, my soul swells with something
greater, larger than normal, and beyond the bounds of human custom and it presses insistently upon my sluggish hands; by no means I know [270] what it would be, but it is something great. Let it be thus. Anticipate this, mind. An act worthy of Thyestes and worthy of Atreus; may each do it. The Thracian house saw the unspeakably horrible tables – I confess, the crime is savage, but it is already taken; let my pain find something greater [275] than this. Inspire the spirit, Daulian parent and sister,(the cause is similar); attend and drive my hand. Let the greedy and happy father tear apart his children and eat his own joints. It is good, it is plenty; this manner of punishment pleases [280] for the moment. Where is he? For why is Atreus going on still innocent? Now before my eyes wanders the whole image of slaughter, childlessness thrown in the face of the father – spirit, why again do you fear and shrink back before the deed? It must be heard, go on; [285] what is the particular evil deed in this crime, that he himself will do it.
[Satelles]
But captured by what tricks, having been led into our snares, will give the foot? He believes everything is hostile.
[Atreus]
He would not be able to be caught, unless he wishes to catch; now he hopes for my kingdom. In this hope he will go under the threats of the swelling whirlpool and will enter the unpredictable straight of the Libyan shore, [290] in this hope he will charge against the thunderbold of threatening Jupter, in this hope, which he believes to be the greatest evil, he will see his brother.
[Satelles]
What faith of peach will he give? Whom will he believe so much?
[Atreus]
[295] Wicked hope is credulous. Although we will give commands to the sons which they will bear to their uncle, as a wandering exile with his hospitalities abandoned that he exchange miseries for kingship and rule Argos as a part-master. If too harsh Thyestes should spurn the [300] prayers, his sons, inexperienced, and tired with evil burdens and easy to catch, will move. From the one side, the old madness for kingship, from the otherside sad desire and harsh labor will drive as much as possible the man no matter how hardened he is with so many evils.
[Satelles]
[305] By now, time has made light toils for that man.
[Atreus]
You wander; the sense of evil grows by day. It is light to bear miseries, it is grave to keep bearing them.
[Satelles]
Choose other helpers for the sad plan.
[Atreus]
Youths listen more easily at worse instructions.
[Satelles]
[310] They will do whatever you teach them in the care of their uncle against the father; often his own crimes have returned against the teacher.
[Atreus]
Even if no one might teach paths of fraud and crime, the kingdom will teach. Do you fear lest they become evil? They were born that way. That thing which you call savage, cruel, [315] and you believe is being done harshly and too impiously,
perhaps it is being done there also.
[Satelles]
Will the sons know that this trick is being prepared?
[Atreus]
Faith is not silent in such inexperienced years; perhaps they will expose the deceptions. To be silent is taught by the many evils of life.
[Satelles]
[320] Will you deceive those through whom you plan to deceive another?
[Atreus]
So that they themselves will be fre of fault and crime. What indeed is necessary to implant the children with my crime. Let our hatreds resolve themselves through us – you do evil, spirit, and fall back; if you spare your sons, [325] you will also spare those ones. Let knowing Agamemnon be a helper in my plan and knowing Menelaus be present for his brother. Let the certainty of uncertain offspring be sought from this crime; if they refuse wars and do not wish to bear hatred, if they call him their uncle, he is their father. Let the mission begin – but the worried [330] face is accustomed to uncover much, great plans betray even the one unwilling; let them not know of what a great matter they are becoming my helpers. As for you, cover our undertakings.
[Satelles]
I do not need to be reminded of this at all; faith and fear will shut those things in my chest, [335] but faith will do it more.
[Chorus]
Finally, the noble palace, the race of ancient Inachus, has connected the threats of the brothers. What rage rouses you all, [340] to give blood in turns and to advance the scepter in crime? You do not know, longing the citdels, in which place the kingdom lies. Power does not make a king, [345] nor the color of a Tyrian robe, nor the known crown of the head, nor beams shining with gold. A king is who sets aside fears and the evils of an ill-omened heart, [350] whom not uncontrolled ambition, nor the unstable favor of the rash crowd moves, nor does whatever is dug from the West or the golden wave which Tagus drags [355] from the clear hollow, nor whatever the fiery threshing floors crush during Libyan harvest, nor whom the falling path of slanted lightening will strike, rest of choral section to be done later
-[ACT III: Thyestes – Tantalus – Plisthenes tacitus][Thyestes]
The desired shelters of the fatherland and the wealth of Argos [405] and the utmost greatest good for the miserable exiles, the plundered region of the native soil and the paternal gods (if they are at last gods) I discern, the sacred towers of the Cyclops, the greater glory of human labor, the racing tracks filled with the young, through which [410] I, famous, often bore the palm in my father’s chariot. Argos will rise to meet me, the people frequently will risebut also certainly will Atreus. Rather seek again the forested refuges and the dense thickets and the life similar to and among the beasts. There is no reason why this shining glamour of the throne should [415] carry off my eyes with its deceptive radiance; when you will look at that which is given, behold the one giving also. Just now among those things, which all think harsh,
but I was resolute and cheerful; now I am returned against fair. The spirit is stuck and desires to bring back the body; [420] I move not a willing step.
[Tantalus]
The father is stunned at the slow pace (what is in this place?) and turns his face and holds himself in uncertainty.
[Thyestes]
Why, spirit, do you weigh down, or why continually do you turn the plan so easily. In uncertain matters, [425] the kingdom, and the brothers, do you now believe and fear evil victories, now do you flee tamed and well-spent misfortunes? Now it is pleasing to be wretched. Turn back your course, while it is allowed, and snatch yourself away.
[Tantalus]
Father, what cause forces you to turn back step from the fatherland having been seen? Why do you [430] carry the wallet from so great things? The brother comes back with the anger having been set aside and returns part of the kingdom and gathers the joints of the torn house and restores yourself to you.
[Thyestes]
You drive out the cuase of fear which I myself do not know; [435] I see nothing which must be feared, but I fear nonetheless. It pleases to go, but my limbs give way with unwilling knees and I, having been withdrawn, am carried away to another place than the one I am struggling to go. Thus the resisting heat brings back with wind and oarsman the raft spurred by oarsman and wind.
[Tantalus]
[440] Conquer whatever stands in the way and impedes the mind and see the so many prizes that await your return. Father, you are able to rule.
[Thyestes]
Yes, since I can die. [Tantalus]
The top power is –
[Thyestes]
Nothing, if you wish nothing.
[Tantalus]
You will leave it for your sons.
[Thyestes]
The kingdom does not hold two.
[Tantalus]
[445] Who chooses to be miserable if he is able to be happy?
[Thyestes]
Believe me, great things by false names are pleasing, harsh things are feared in vain. While I stood lofty, never did I cease to dread and to fear the iron itself of my side. O how good it is to stand before no one, [450] to have the safe banquets reclining on the ground! Crime does not etner lowly homes, and a safe cup is taken from the narrow table; poison is drunk in a gold cup – I speak as an expert. It is reasonable to prefer evil fortune to good. [455] The humble citizen does not fear the house placed and threatening on the peak of a high mountain, nor does splendid ivory shine on my high roofs and a guard does not defend my slumbers; I do not fish with fleets and I do not cause the sea to flee
[460] away from the heaps thrown onto it, nor do I feed the wicked stomach with tribute from whole nations; for me no field is harvested beyond Getae and Parthos; I am not worshipped with incense nor are my altars decorated with Jupiter having been excluded; no forest [465] sways placed on my roofs, nor do many pools smoke having been set on fire by my hand, nor is the day given to sleep and the night given over to wine in order to be joined to it. But I am not feared, my house is safe without weapons, and from small matters great peace arises. [470] To be able to do without a kingdom is itself a great kingdom.
[Tantalus]
Neither it is to be refused, if the god gives you rule, nor is it to be sought. The brother asks that you rule.
[Thyestes]
He asks it? It is to be feared; here some deceit wanders.
[Tantalus]
Piety is accustomed to return from where it was driven out, [475] and righteous love restores the thrown-out powers.
