The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library), page 44
In reading Tacitus and Juvenal we feel that they must have exaggerated. Like the man who comforted himself after the sermon on hell fire with the reflection that “no constitution would stand it,” we feel that if half this were true the Roman state must have come to an end far sooner, long before this, whereas it not merely lasted but went on to achieve greater order and prosperity. Halfway through the Silver Age, Nero provoked a revolt, and there followed in rapid succession four emperors by the grace of the Army—Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian, representing respectively the Army of Spain, the Household Troops, the Army of the Rhine, and a coalition of the Armies of the Danube and the Euphrates. Now there was no more make-believing in the Republic. For a number of reigns the throne was inherited by a real or adoptive heir (with one or two violent changes of dynasty; the Roman Empire from first to last resembled Gilbert’s “Utopia, Ltd.,” “a despotism tempered by dynamite,” or by the assassination which was its Roman equivalent). The change from pretended First Citizen to avowed Emperor had come about by Tacitus’s time; it was because the Republic was unquestionably, irretrievably gone that it was safe to regret it. The Emperor was deified in his lifetime, and the worship of the deified Emperor held together the Roman state. And for some two centuries that state had a succession of strong and able rulers. The period of the Antonine Emperors has been called, for its peace and prosperity, the Golden Age of the Roman Empire. But something had gone out of it, for it produced no more great works. Peace and prosperity are not enough.
SENECA
(Lucius Annæus Seneca, 4? B.c—65 A.D.)
Medea
Translated by Frank Justus Miller
CHARACTERS
MEDEA, daughter of Æetes, King of Colchis, and wife of Jason
JASON, son of Æson, and nephew of Pelias, the usurping king of Thessaly; organizer and leader of the Argonautic expedition to Colchis in quest of the golden fleece
CREON, King of Corinth, who had received into his hospitable kingdom Medea and Jason, fugitives from Thessaly, after Medea had plotted the death of Pelias
NURSE, of Medea
MESSENGER
TWO SONS, of Medea and Jason (personæ mutæ)
CHORUS OF CORINTHIANS, friendly to Jason and hostile to Medea
The time of the play is confined to the single day of the culmination of the tragedy, the day proposed by Creon for the banishment of Medea and marriage of Jason to Creüsa, daughter of Creon.
The scene is in Corinth, in the court of the house of Jason.
ACT I
MEDEA: Ye gods of wedlock, thou the nuptial couch’s guard,
Lucina, thou from whom that tamer of the deep,
The Argo’s pilot, learned to guide his pristine bark,
And Neptune, thou stern ruler of the ocean’s depths,
And Titan, by whose rays the shining day is born,
Thou triformed maiden Hecate, whose conscious beams
With splendour shine upon the mystic worshipers—
Upon ye all I call, the powers of heaven, the gods
By whose divinity false Jason swore; and ye
Whose aid Medea may more boldly claim, thou world
Of endless night, th’ antipodes of heavenly realms,
Ye damnèd ghosts, thou lord of hades’ dark domain,
Whose mistress was with trustier pledge won to thy side—
Before ye all this baleful prayer I bring: Be near!
Be near! Ye crime-avenging furies, come and loose
Your horrid locks with serpent coils entwined, and grasp
With bloody hands the smoking torch; be near as once
Ye stood in dread array beside my wedding couch.
Upon this new-made bride destruction send, and death
Upon the king and all the royal line! But he,
My husband, may he live to meet some heavier doom;
This curse I imprecate upon his head; may he,
Through distant lands, in want, in exile wander, scorned
And houseless. Nay, may he once more my favor woo;
A stranger’s threshold may he seek where now he walks
A well-known guest; and—this the blackest curse I know—
May children rise to him to emulate their sire,
Their mother’s image bear.—Now won is vengeance, won!
For I have children borne.—Nay, nay, ‘tis empty plaints
And useless words I frame. Shall I not rather rush
Against the foe and dash the torches from their hands,
The light from heaven? Does Father Phœbus suffer this?
Do men behold his face, as, seated in his car,
He rolls along th’ accustomed track of sky serene?
Why does he not return to morning’s gates, the law
Of heaven reversing? Grant that I be borne aloft
In my ancestral car! Give me the reins, 0 sire,
Thy fiery team grant me to guide with lines of flame.
Then Corinth, though with double shore delaying fate,
Herself consumed with fire, shall light two seas with flame.
But no, this course alone remains, that I myself
Should bear the wedding torch, with acquiescent prayers,
And slay the victims on the altars consecrate.
Thyself inspect the entrails, and seek there the way
By prayer, if still, O soul, thou livest, if there still
Remaineth aught of old-time strength in thee! Away
With women’s fears! Put on thy heart a breast-plate hard
And chill as Caucasus! Then all the wizard arts
That Phasis knew, or Pontus, shall be seen again
In Corinth. Now with mad, unheard-of, dreadful deeds,
Whereat high heaven and earth below shall pale and quake,
My pregnant soul is teeming; and my heart is full
Of pictured wounds and death and slaughter.—Ah, too long
On trifling ills I dwell. These were my virgin deeds.
Now that a mother’s pains I’ve felt, my larger heart
Must larger crimes conceive. Then passion, gird thyself,
Put on thy strength, and for the issue now prepare!
Let my rejection pay as dread a fee as when,
Of old, through impious deeds of blood, I came to him.
Come, break through slow delay, and let the home once won
By crime, by equal deeds of crime be done away!
CHORUS (chanting the epithalamium for the nuptials of
Jason and Creüsa):
Now on our royal nuptials graciously smiling,
Here may the lords of heaven and the deeps of the ocean
Come while the people feast in pious rejoicing!
First to the gods who sway the sceptre of heaven,
Pealing forth their will in the voice of thunder,
Let the white bull his proud head bow in tribute.
Then to the fair Lucina, her gift we offer,
White as the driven snow, this beautiful heifer,
Still with her neck untouched by the yoke of bondage.
Thou who alone canst rule the heart of the war-god,
Thou who linkest in peace the opposing nations,
Out of thy generous hand abundance pouring—
Thee we offer a daintier gift, 0 Concord!
Thou who, on the marriage torches attending,
Night’s dark gloom with favouring hand dispellest,
Hither come with languishing footstep drunken,
Binding thy temples fair with garlands of roses!
Star of the evening, thou who to twilight leadest
The day, and hailest again the dawn of the morning,
All too slowly thou com‘st for lovers impatient,
Eager to see thy sign in the glow of the sunset.
The fairest of girls is she,
The Athenian maids outshining,
Or the Spartan maiden with armour laden,
No burden of war declining.
Not by Alpheus’ sacred stream,
Nor Bœotia’s musical water,
Is there any fair who can compare
With our lovely Corinthian daughter.
Our Thessalian prince excels,
In beauty of form and face,
Even Bacchus, the son of the fierce-flaming one,
Who yokes the wild tigers in place.
The murmuring tripod’s lord,
Though the fairest in heavenly story,
The twins with their star bright gleaming afar—
All yield to our Jason in glory.
When in her train of courtly maidens she mingles—
Like the bright sunshine paling the starry splendour,
Or the full moonlight quenching the Pleiads’ brilliance,
So does she shine, all peerless, of fair ones the fairest.
Now, 0 Jason, freed from the hateful wedlock
That held thee bound to the barbarous Colchian woman,
Joyfully wed the fair Corinthian maiden,
While at last her parents’ blessings attend thee.
Ho then, youths, with licensed jest and rejoicing,
Loud let the songs of gladness ring through the city;
Rarely against our lords such freedom is given.
Fair and noble band of Bacchus, the thyrsus-bearer,
Now is the time to light the glittering torches of pine
wood.
Shake on high the festal fire with languishing fingers;
Now let the bold and merry Fescennine laughter and
jesting
Sound through our ranks. Let Medea fare in silence and
darkness,
If perchance another lord she shall wed in her exile.
ACT II
MEDEA: We are undone! How harsh upon mine ears doth grate
The song! and even now I cannot comprehend
The vast extent of woe that hath befallen me.
Could Jason prove so false? Bereft of native land,
And home, and kingdom, could he leave me here alone
On foreign shores? Oh, cruel, could he quite reject
My sum of service, he who saw the fire and sea
With crime o‘ercome for his dear sake? And does he think
That thus the fatal chapter can be ended? Wild,
Devoid of reason, sick of soul, my swift mind darts
In all directions seeking whence revenge may come!
I would he had a brother! But his wife—‘gainst her
Be aimed the blow! Can thus my wrongs be satisfied?
Nay, nay—to meet my sum of woe must be heaped high
The crimes of Greece, of strange barbaric lands, and those
Which even thy hands have not known. Now lash thy soul
With memory’s scourge, and call thy dark deeds in review:
The glory of thy father’s kingdom reft away;
Thy brother, guiltless comrade of thy guilty flight,
All hewn in pieces and his corpse strewn on the deep,
To break his royal father’s heart; and, last of crimes,
Old Pelias by his daughters slain at thy command.
O impious one, what streams of blood have flowed to work
Thy ends! And yet, not one of all my crimes by wrath
Was prompted. Love, ill-omened love, suggested all.
Yet, what could Jason else have done, compelled to serve
Another’s will, another’s law? He should have died
Before he yielded to the tyrant’s will. Nay, nay,
Thou raging passion, speak not so! For, if he may,
I would that Jason still may live and still be mine,
As once he was; if not, yet may he still live on,
And, mindful of my merits, live without my aid.
The guilt is Creon’s all, who with unbridled power
Dissolves the marriage bond, my children separates
From me who bore them, yea, and makes the strongest pledge,
Though ratified with straitest oath, of none effect.
Let him alone sustain my wrath; let Creon pay
The debt of guilt he owes! His palace will I bring
To utter desolation; and the whirling fire
To far-off Malea’s crags shall send its lurid glare.
NURSE: Be silent now, I pray thee, and thy plaints confine
To secret woe! The man who heavy blows can bear
In silence, biding still his time with patient soul,
Full oft his vengeance gains. ‘Tis hidden wrath that harms;
But hate proclaimed oft loses half its power to harm.
MEDEA: But small the grief is that can counsel take and hide
Its head; great ills lie not in hiding, but must rush
Abroad and work their will.
NURSE: Oh, cease this mad complaint,
My mistress; scarce can friendly silence help thee now.
MEDEA: But fortune fears the brave, the faint of heart o‘erwhelms.
NURSE: Then valour be approved, if for it still there’s room.
MEDEA: But it must always be that valour finds its place.
NURSE: No star of hope points out the way from these our woes.
MEDEA: The man who hopes for naught at least has naught to fear.
NURSE: The Colchians are thy foes; thy husband’s vows have failed;
Of all thy vast possessions not a jot is left.
MEDEA: Yet I am left. There’s left both sea and land and fire
And sword and gods and hurtling thunderbolts.
NURSE: The king must be revered.
MEDEA: My father was a king.
NURSE: Dost thou not fear?
MEDEA: Not though the earth produced the foe.
NURSE: Thou‘lt perish.
MEDEA: So I wish it.
NURSE: Flee!
MEDEA: I’m done with flight.
Why should Medea flee?
NURSE: Thy children!
MEDEA: Whose, thou knowst.
NURSE : And dost thou still delay?
MEDEA: I go, but vengeance first.
NURSE : Th’ avenger will pursue.
MEDEA: Perchance I’ll stop his course.
NURSE: Nay, hold thy words, and cease thy threats, 0 foolish one.
Thy temper curb; ‘tis well to yield to fate’s decrees.
MEDEA: Though fate may strip me of my all, myself am left.
But who flings wide the royal palace doors? Behold,
‘Tis Creon’s self, exalted high in Grecian sway.
(Medea retires to back of stage; exit Nurse; enter Creon)
CREON: Medea, baleful daughter of the Colchian king,
Has not yet taken her hateful presence from our realm.
On mischief is she bent. Well known her treach‘rous power.
For who escapes her? Who may pass his days in peace?
This cursèd pestilence at once would I have stayed
By force of arms; but Jason’s prayers prevailed. She still
May live, but let her free my borders from the fear
Her presence genders, and her safety gain by flight. (He sees Medea approaching)
But lo, she comes, with fierce and threatening mien, to seek
An audience with us. (To attendants) Slaves, defend us from her touch
And pestilential presence! Bid her silence keep,
And learn to yield obedience to the king’s commands.
(To Medea) Go, speed thy flight, thou thing of evil, fell, and monstrous!
MEDEA: But tell me what the crime, my lord, or what the guilt
That merits exile?
CREON: Let the guiltless question thus.
MEDEA: If now thou judgest, hear me; if thou reign‘st, command.
CREON: The king’s command thou must abide, nor question aught.
MEDEA: Unrighteous sovereignty has never long endured.
CREON : Go hence, and to the Colchians complain.
MEDEA: I go,
But let him take me hence who brought me to thy shores.
CREON: Thy prayer has come too late, for fixed is my decree.
MEDEA: Who judges, and denies his ear to either side,
Though right his judgment, still is he himself unjust.
CREON: Didst lend thine ear to Pelias, ere thou judgedst him?
But come, I’ll give thee grace to plead thy goodly cause.
MEDEA: How hard the task to turn the soul from wrath, when once
To wrath inclined; how ‘tis the creed of sceptred kings
To swerve not from the purposed course they once have taken,
Full well I know, for I have tasted royalty.
For, though by present storms of ill I’m overwhelmed,
An exile, suppliant, lone, forsaken, all forlorn,
I once in happier times a royal princess shone,
And traced my proud descent from heavenly Phoebus’ self.
My father’s realm extended wide o‘er all the land
Where Phasis’ gentle waters flow, o‘er Scythia’s plains
Whose rivers sweeten Pontus’ briny waves; where, too,
Thermodon’s banks inclose the race of warlike maids,
Whose gleaming shields strike terror to their foes. All this
My father held in sway. And I, of noble birth,
And blessed of heaven, in royal state was high upraised.
Then princes humbly sought my hand in wedlock, mine,
Who now must sue. 0 changeful fortune, thou my throne
Hast reft away, and given me exile in its stead.
Trust not in kindly realms, since fickle chance may strew
Their treasures to the winds. Lo, this is regal, this
The work of kings, which time nor change cannot undo:
To succor the afflicted, to provide at need
A trusty refuge for the suppliant. This alone
I brought of all my Colchian treasure, this renown,
This very flower of fame, that by my arts I saved
The bulwark of the Greeks, the offspring of the gods.
My princely gift to Greece is Orpheus, that sweet bard
Who can the trees in willing bondage draw, and melt
