Your anger on Helen as destroyer of men.

One woman destroyer of many

Lives of Greek men,

A hurt that cannot be healed.

CHORUS.

O Evil Spirit, falling on the family.

On the two sons of Atreus and using

Two sisters in heart as your tools.

A power that bites to the heart—

See on the body

Perched like a raven he gloats

Harshly croaking his hymn.

CLYTEMNESTRA.

Ah, now you have amended your lips’ opinion.

Calling upon this family’s three times gorged

Genius—demon who breeds

Blood-hankering lust in the belly:

Before the old sore heals, new pus collects.

CHORUS.

It is a great spirit—great—

You tell of, harsh in anger,

A ghastly tale, alas,

Of unsatisfied disaster

Brought by Zeus, by Zeus,

Cause and worker of all.

For without Zeus what comes to pass among us?

Which of these things is outside Providence?

O my king, my king,

How shall I pay you in tears,

Speak my affection in words?

You lie in that spider’s web,

In a desecrating death breathe out your life,

Lie ignominiously

Defeated by a crooked death

And the two-edged cleaver’s stroke.

CLYTEMNESTRA.

You say this is my work—mine?

Do not cozen yourself that I am Agamemnon’s wife.

Masquerading as the wife

Of the corpse there the old sharp-witted Genius

Of Atreus who gave the cruel banquet

Has paid with a grown man’s life

The due for children dead.

CHORUS.

That you are not guilty of

This murder who will attest?

No, but you may have been abetted

By some ancestral Spirit of Revenge.

Wading a millrace of the family’s blood

The black Manslayer forces a forward path

To make the requital at last

For the eaten children, the blood-clot cold with time.

O my king, my king.

How shall I pay you in tears,

Speak my affection in words?

You lie in that spider’s web,

In a desecrating death breathe out your life,

Lie ignominiously

Defeated by a crooked death

And the two-edged cleaver’s stroke.

EDUCATING CYRUS

Cyropaedia

Xenophon

Translated by Wayne Ambler, 2001

The Cyropaedia or ‘Education of Cyrus’ is a glorifying life of Cyrus the Great (c. 600–530 BC), the founding king of the Persian Empire, centred on the southwestern part of modern Iran. Often likened to Machiavelli’s The Prince, it was written by Xenophon (c. 431–354 BC), a pupil of Socrates, in the first half of the fourth century BC – more than a century and a half after Cyrus lived. In this passage, Cyrus, son of Cambyses and Mandane, is around twelve years old. He accompanies his mother on a visit to see his grandfather Astyages, a king of the Medes, who lived to the north of the Persians. This extract reveals the cultural differences between the Medes and their southern neighbours.