Part 10

Hecuba is appalled at this fate that is decreed for her child. She whose pure spirit had always ranged beyond the things of time and sense, who was the consecrated priestess of Apollo and set apart for holy service, is condemned to be the slave-wife of the man who has destroyed their city. The poor mother wails in horror at the thought: it is too awful, too sacrilegious a deed even for these proud Greeks, and she cries out in protest. The herald silences her with a brutal comment on the good fortune which makes her daughter the bride of a king; and then orders an attendant to fetch Cassandra from the tents. But there is no need for the man to go. Even while they are speaking there comes a sudden flash of strange fire, and the wild figure of Cassandra appears, robed in white, garlanded with flowers and carrying a blazing torch. The fearful events of the past night have driven her to a frenzy. Arrayed as for a happy bridal, she comes singing a hymn to Hymen; but the terror in her eyes, and the poignancy of the words she utters hold her hearers dumb:

“_Hail, O Hymen red, O Torch that makest one! Weepest thou, Mother mine own? Surely thy cheek is pale With tears, tears that wail For a land and a father dead. But I go garlanded: I am the bride of Desire...._

“_O mother, fill mine hair with happy flowers, And speed me forth.... So liveth Loxias, A bloodier bride than ever Helen was Go I to Agamemnon, Lord most high Of Hellas!... I shall kill him, mother! I Shall kill him, and lay waste his house with fire As he laid ours. My brothers and my sire Shall win again!..._“[18]

Her frenzy gives place now to a more meditative strain. It is as though the fiery cloud that hung about her brain was pierced for an instant by the sight of her grieving mother. She tries to find words to comfort Hecuba; and as the calmer mood deepens she rises to a perception of the dignity of high failure contrasted with low success. The Trojans dying for their homes she sees as a nobler thing than the triumph of the Greeks.

“_Would, ye be wise, ye Cities, fly from war! Yet if war come, there is a crown in death For her that striveth well and perisheth Unstained: to die in evil were the stain! Therefore, O Mother, pity not thy slain, Nor Troy, nor me, the bride. Thy direst foe And mine by this my wooing is brought low._”[18]

At this point the herald is suddenly roused to reply. He turns upon her furiously for her ominous forebodings and bids her be silent. If he did not know her for a mad woman, he says, she should suffer for boding thus evil to the Greeks. He orders her roughly to follow him; but at his speech the frenzy rushes over Cassandra again. She turns upon Talthybius in magnificent anger and scorn. “How fierce a slave,” she cries; and then the prophetic gift burns in her as she foretells in language of awful beauty her own doom and that of Agamemnon.

“_Thou Greek King, Who deem’st thy fortune now so high a thing, Thou dust of the earth, a lowlier bed I see, In darkness, not in light, awaiting thee; And with thee, with thee ... there, where yawneth plain A rift of the hills, raging with winter rain, Dead ... and outcast ... and naked.... It is I Beside my bridegroom; and the wild beasts cry, And ravin on God’s chosen!..._

“_Mother, farewell, and weep not! O my sweet City, my earth-clad brethren, and thou great Sire that begat us; but a space, ye Dead, And I am with you; yea, with crownèd head I come, and shining from the fires that feed On these that slay us now, and all their seed._“[18]

Cassandra is led away to the Greek ships, no blessing to the toiling mariners. For even their own gods are wrath at the crime against her; and many a heart-breaking struggle is in store for them: many a noble ship will be lost, and many a hero’s life will pay the penalty, before their homes are reached. Perhaps to Agamemnon more than most, the Deities of the Elements were kind. But then they knew the fate awaiting him, and in ironic pleasure sped him to it. There is no need to recall the details of his arrival at Mycenæ, or of his welcome by Clytemnestra, almost distraught by conflicting hope and fear. Agamemnon was weary of his voyage; weary, too, of the long steep chariot-drive up from the sea. Yielding to his wife’s entreaty to walk on costly crimson to the palace, he turns for an instant to Cassandra’s chariot.

“_Receive, I pray thee This stranger-woman kindly. Heaven still smiles, When power is used with gentleness. No mortal Is willingly a captive, but this maid, Of countless spoils the flower and crown, was given To me by the army, and attends me home._”[19]

The moment is crowded with emotion. For the briefest space—merely long enough, in fact, to make the Trojan woman formally known to Clytemnestra—these three strong spirits face each other. Cassandra, wide-eyed and rigid, looks beyond the king and queen, beyond the crowding people, at _something_ that her vision warns her is beyond the palace doors. To Clytemnestra, her presence is an insult, and her purity an intolerable reproach. There is one glance of bitterness and hatred from the queen which Cassandra does not see; and then the insolent king enters the palace, Clytemnestra following him. She returns immediately, however, lashed to a fury in which her dignity goes to shreds.

CLY. _In with thee too, Cassandra! Get thee in! Since Heaven in mercy hath consigned thee here To share our household lustral waters, one Of many slaves that stand around our hearth. Come from that carriage. Be not proud. Descend!_

The speech is cruel; and it has, moreover, an inner meaning which the poor captive perceives only too well. She does not answer. She listens in silence, too, when the Chorus address her; and when Clytemnestra, with that crucial moment imminent, grows wild with impatience. “Sure she is mad,” ejaculates the angry queen; “I’ll not demean myself by throwing more words away.” Only when she has gone does Cassandra break silence; and then by a wail which the sympathetic Elders cannot understand.

“_Ai, Ai! O Apollo! Apollo!... Builder! Destroyer! Builder of Troy! Destroyer of me!_“[19]

The old men pity her, and try to calm her frenzy. She looks round on them, as if awakening from a dream, and asks what house is this. They reply that it is the Atridæ’s palace, and the word calls up to Cassandra the long black record of the house of Atreus.

CASS. _Ah! a hideous den, abhorred of Heaven, Guilt-stained with strangled lives.... Ah! faugh!_

CHO. _Her scent is keen, this stranger’s! Like a hound She snuffs for blood. And she will find, I doubt me._[19]

In a long recital, Cassandra recounts the ancient crimes of the Atridæ; and in dark oracular language moans that there is worse behind. The old men are perplexed. They cannot follow her meaning, though over and over again she struggles to make clear the doom that is even now about to fall.

CASS. _Ah! what is this? Oh me! What strange new grief is risen? A deed of might ..._ _An act Of hate for love; and succour bides aloof, Far, far away._

CHO. _This prophecy is dark to me...._

CASS. ... _’Twill come, ‘Tis here! She lifts her hand; she launches at him Blow following blow!_

CHO. _Thy speech appals me._

CASS. _Woe! For my hapless doom! To fill the cup, I tell my own sad tale! Why hast thou brought me to this place? Oh misery! To die with thee? What else? To die!... To die!... Paris, thy wedding hath destroyed thy house, Yea, and thy sister!—O Scamander stream! Our fathers drank of thee and by thy shore I grew, I flourished. Oh unhappy I! But now by dark Cocytus and the banks Of Acheron, my prophecies shall sound._[19]

The Elders begin to understand; but still the drift of her message is only partly clear to them. They realize that she is distraught, fearing some dreadful fate for herself; they have, too, a glimmering fear of danger to the king. But they cannot comprehend what it may be; and the thought of succour never dawns upon their dull old wits. They speak gently to Cassandra; but again her message seems to tear her with its force and urgency.

“_No longer, like a newly married girl, My word shall peep behind a veil, but, flashing With panted vehemence to meet the day, ‘Twill dash, against the shores of Light, a sorrow Of mightier volume._“[19]

Then, point by point, she goes with studied clarity over all the “trail of long-past crime.” So long as this is her theme, the Elders understand and confirm her words. But when, rising again on the wings of prophecy and therefore to a rapt and obscure utterance, she foretells the fall of Agamemnon and her own death, they are again at sea. She pauses for an instant, baffled; she knows that her end is imminent, and in her despair she casts stinging words at them for their stupidity and inaction. Never has Apollo’s ban wrought so bitterly; and in the extremity of her anguish she declares that she will call upon the god no longer. She strips herself of the sacred emblems and flings them from her.

“_Why wear I still these mockeries of my soul, This wand, these fillets round my neck? I tear ye Thus! Go to your destruction ere I die! To pieces with you! Lead the way! I follow! Enrich some other life with misery.... I will go forward! I will dare to die! Hail, then, thou gate of Hell!_“[19]

She takes a few steps toward the palace; but her courage fails for a moment. The reek of blood in her nostrils stifles her, and she recoils. In her last words passion and strength alike fade out, giving place to a pathetic human appeal:

“_O strangers! friends! I shrink not idly, like some timorous bird Before a bush! Bear record in that day When I am dead...._“[19]

And the old men, as she passes slowly out of sight, wail over her what is perhaps her most fitting epitaph:

_Ah! what is mortal life? When prosperous, A shadow can o’erturn it; and, when fallen, A throw o’ the wet sponge blurs the picture out._ THIS IS MORE PITEOUS THAN THE RUIN OF PRIDE.[19]

Footnote 17:

From Mr Andrew Lang’s _Helen of Troy_ (G. Bell & Sons).

Footnote 18:

From Professor G. Murray’s translation of the _Troades_ (George Allen & Co. Ltd.).

Footnote 19:

From Professor Lewis Campbell’s translation of the _Agamemnon_ (Clarendon Press).

_Æschylus: Io_

We turn now from the Trojan legend to that of Thebes. We are still in the realm of Tragedy; and in some respects the Theban story is more barbarous than that of Troy. But by some means the tension is slightly relieved, and the atmosphere is lightened by one degree. Perhaps that is because, in the dramas which treat of this subject, the poets seem to have gone back further into the remote past and to have steeped themselves in the spirit of those early times. Perhaps, too, it is on account of something wilder and more primitive inherent in the Theban story itself. Such elements, and such a treatment by the poets, would tend to remove the persons of the drama a step further from probability, and would make them to that extent greater or less than human. Thus their appeal to the emotions would not be so direct, nor so intimate. On the other hand, the figures so presented gain in sublimity. Their mythical origin surrounds them with a halo, through which they loom vast, mysterious, and inaccessible.

Such a being is Io. In the _Prometheus Bound_, the drama in which her story is given, Æschylus has gone back for his subject literally to the beginning of things; to the time when Zeus was young and the reign of Chaos was not long overpast. We must be prepared then for a tale which in its details is marvellous and incredible: for a naïve account of the love of the supreme god for a mortal woman: of the anger of Hera, his jealous queen: of the metamorphosis and long wanderings of the innocent maid: and of her reward at last, when she becomes the ancestress of the founder of Thebes, and ancestress too, in a remote generation, of Heracles, the deliverer of Prometheus.

It is here that we touch Io’s connexion with the Theban legend, into which as a fact she does not otherwise enter. For her son Epaphus, wondrously born at the touch of the finger of Zeus, had two grandsons, Cadmus and Cilix; and a granddaughter, Europa. The well-known legend tells how Zeus, in the shape of a bull, carried off Europa. Whereupon her two brothers went in search of their sister and wandered many a long day. They did not recover her, however, and at length gave up the search. Cilix settled down in a country which was called Cilicia after him; and Cadmus, instructed by the oracle at Delphi, followed a straying cow into Bœotia. On the spot where the animal should happen to lie down he was commanded to found his city. But his task proved to be no light one. For there was a dragon to be overcome; and a weird army, sprung from the earth where the dragon’s teeth were sown, had to be vanquished in battle before Cadmus could begin his work of founding the city of Thebes.

This event, as we see, is only remotely connected with Io, although the connexion is precise and clear. In point of time, if chronology is the least use in such a case, it is several generations nearer to us than she is. Yet we have only to cast one glance at the story of Cadmus to see at once its youthful element of marvel. Its wonders are so crude as almost to raise a smile—the half amused, half tender smile with which we turn over in our hand some grotesque plaything of our childhood. It is indeed only the humorous aspect of these old stories which seizes us when we look back at them from a detached standpoint, and with minds bent to the critical attitude. But that was not the poet’s attitude; not, at least, when he was making poetry. Doubtless there must have been moments when the Comic Spirit rebelled, since even poets do not live alone by the emotions. But when tragedy first entered life’s deep waters its captains bound the mischievous laughing spirit securely under hatches. It could be of no service in such a stern battle with the elements.

So we find that the tragic poets (except perhaps Euripides occasionally) treat these strange old stories in what is called ‘the grand manner.’ Do not be disturbed by something stiff and formal in the expression. Like all definitions, it is smaller and harder than the thing it tries to define. For the poet has not the least intention of being ‘grand,’ and is as far as possible removed from any conscious ‘manner.’ On the contrary, it is true as a rule that the greater he is, the simpler his thought and expression are. He comes to these old themes with the eye and the heart of a child as well as the brain of a great genius; and the spirit of poetry, with all the knowledge of all the ages, utters its message through his lips in limpid song. Matters of probability and questions of logic, which seem so important to the mere intellect, bow their chastened heads before him. The whole scheme of values is changed, and that which appeared to the arrogant intellect as wild and ludicrous is perceived by the poet full of strange beauty and significance.

In this way Sophocles approached the Theban legend, as we shall see when we come to Jocasta and Antigone, presently. In this way, too, Æschylus gave us the story of Io in his _Prometheus Bound_. Just when Io is supposed to have lived we do not know. She is said to have been the daughter of Inachus; and she was a priestess of Hera in Argos. But Æchylus has made her coeval with the Titans. In this poem, therefore, she is a denizen of that early world which saw the overthrow of Cronos from the throne of heaven, and the rise of his son Zeus. All the Titans save one had opposed the new god when he rose in rebellion against the primeval powers. But Prometheus, far-seeing from the first, and knowing that Zeus must conquer, lent him aid. It was a long and bitter struggle in the youth of the world. But at last Cronos and the Titans who had opposed him were hurled by Zeus into Tartarus—“under the misty darkness ... in a dank place, at the verge of the earth.” Typhon was buried under Etna; and Atlas, far in the West, was bowed beneath the pillar of the heavens, “where night and day meet and greet one another, as they pass the great threshold of bronze.”

All now seemed calm and fair for the establishment of the new Hierarchy. Too calm and fair; for Zeus, with all his enemies subdued and possessing absolute power, soon grew tyrannical. With leisure now from Olympian warfare, he looked down upon the earth and the feeble race of men. It seemed to him a contemptible thing, struggling weakly against pitiless forces and groping its way, by minute degrees that were imperceptible from his lofty height, toward a larger and a better state. It was a mean and futile and impotent race, he pondered. Surely it would be better to wipe it out of existence altogether, than let it continue to blot the face of the fair world.

So concluded the youthful ruler of Olympus, in his haughty strength. But Prometheus knew mankind better than Zeus. The hills and valleys of earth were his kin, dear and familiar to him; and he had come to love the imperfect human soul that had just managed to get itself born in those rude cave-men. He saw the violent act that the Lord of Olympus was planning in his mind; and resolved to save humanity. So, as the old poet Hesiod says in his _Works and Days_, “he stole fire for men from Zeus the Counsellor in a hollow fennel stalk, what time the Hurler of the Thunder knew not.” But the boon to man meant sheer disaster to himself, as he knew when he filched it from Olympus. The purpose of Zeus could not be thwarted with impunity. Prometheus was condemned to age-long punishment, chained to a rock on an icy mountain top until such time as a deliverer should come, and an immortal being could be found willing to give up life for him. The punishment of Prometheus is the subject of the present drama. It is believed to have been the middle play of a trilogy, of which the last was the _Prometheus Unbound_, and the first probably related the bringing of fire to earth. The _Prometheus Bound_ is not dramatic in the sense that the _Agamemnon_ and the _Choephorœ_ are. There is hardly any action in it, for the suffering Titan continues chained to his rock throughout the poem. From the nature of the theme, too, the characters are too colossal and remote to make an intimate appeal to us. Yet the drama is charged with the deepest emotion, transcending the pity or fear of common experience. If it does not start into life before our eyes as an actual conflict, that is because it is rooted in a deeper and more crucial struggle between cosmic forces. And if the persons of the drama are unapproachable and unfamiliar, it is from the very reason of their sublimity. We see the protagonist first as he is being riveted to the rocky wall by the god Hephæstus. The Fire-god reluctantly performs the task, bidden to it roughly by Force, who is invested for the moment with the strength of Zeus, but without his dignity. Hephæstus is indignant at the sentence on his kinsman, the titan, and declares that he has no heart to chain him in this stormy mountain region, merely because of his beneficent help to man. But Force is inexorable: he urges on the work until every limb of the titan is secured, and an adamantine wedge is driven through his breast. When all is accomplished, Prometheus is left alone; and then for the first time he breaks silence. He invokes the elements that are his kindred: the sky, the winds, the rivers, the smiling sea, the sun, the great earth-mother.

“_See me tormented by the gods, a god! Behold me, what agony Through the measureless course of the ages Racked, I shall suffer; I by the upstart Ruler in heaven To captivity doomed and outrage. Woe, woe is me!... ... Blessings, that on man I lavished, have involved me in this fate, And for that in a hollow fennel stalk I sought and stored and stole the fount of flame, Whence men all arts have learned, a potent help._“[1]

While Prometheus is speaking, there gather softly round him the gentle sea-nymphs who are to be the chorus of the drama. They question him tenderly, in words that fall like balm, and elicit all his story. It is pitiable, they say, and they marvel at the penalty which Zeus imposes on so kind a creature.

Presently Oceanus himself, god of the dreadful river that circles the world, approaches in his chariot. He is old and grave and prudent. The action of Prometheus seems to him rash and daring: his opposition to Zeus mere pride. He advises the titan to yield, since it is expedient to bow to the superior power. But Prometheus fiercely rejects such timid counsel. Nothing shall shake his resistance to the tyrant, and Oceanus may spare his breath. Let him go save himself: as for Prometheus, he will endure until it shall please Zeus to relent.

Hot words pass. Oceanus tries in vain to teach prudence to the high heart of the titan, and departs angrily. Then the sea-nymphs sing a sweet song of pity; and Prometheus, touched to a softer mood, begs them not to think him hard and proud. Only, the thought of his wrongs is intolerable, received at the hand of one whom he himself had helped to place upon the throne of Olympus. And what had been his crime? None. His hands are clean: his integrity absolute. His sufferings are an amazing injustice: the price of beneficent deeds to humanity that he tells over to the wondering maids.

“_I will recount you, how, mere babes before, With reason I endowed them and with mind ... Who, firstly, seeing, knew not what they saw, And hearing did not hear; confusedly passed Their life-days, lingeringly, like shapes in dreams, Without an aim; and neither sunward homes, Brick-woven, nor skill of carpentry, they knew; But lived, like small ants shaken with a breath, In sunless caves a burrowing buried life: ... The hidden lore Of rising stars and setting I unveiled. I taught them Number, first of sciences; I framed the written symbols into speech, Art all-recording, mother of the Muse: I first put harness on dumb patient beasts ... That they might lighten men of heavy toil, I taught to draw the car and love the rein Horses, crown of the luxury of wealth. And who but I invented the white-winged Sea-roving chariot of the mariner?_

“_For mortals such contrivances I found, But for myself alas no wit have I, Whereby to rid me of my present pain._”[20]