Fragment of a Greek Tragedy

Fragment of a Greek Tragedy

from the lost Alcmaeon of Aeschylus

CHORUS 

 

O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots

Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom

Whence by what way how purposed are thou come

To this well-nightingaled vicinity?

My object in inquiring is to know.

But if you happen to be deaf and dumb

And do not understand a word I say,

Then wave your hand, to signify as much.

 

ALCMAEON

 

I journeyed hither a Boeotian road.

 

CHO.

 

Sailing on horseback, or with feet for oars?
 

ALC.

 

Plying with speed my partnership of legs.

 

CHO.

 

Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?

 

ALC.

 

Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.

 

CHO.

 

To learn your name would not displease me much.

 

ALC.

 

Not all that men desire do they obtain.

 

CHO.

 

Might I then hear at what your presence shoots?

 

ALC.

 

A shepherd's questioned mouth informed me that--

 

CHO.

 

What? for I know not yet what you will say.

 

 ALC.

 

Nor will you ever if you interrupt.

 

CHO.

 

Proceed, and I will hold my speechless tongue.

 

ALC.

 

---This house was Eriphyla's, no one's else.

 

CHO.

 

Nor did he shame his throat with hateful lies.

 

ALC.

 

May I then enter, passing through the door?

 

CHO.

 

Go, chase into the house a lucky foot.

And, O my son, be, on the on hand, good,

And do not, on the other hand, be bad;

For that is very much the safest plan.

 

ALC.

 

I go into the house with heels and speed.

 

CHO. [strophe]

 

  In speculation

I would not willingly acquire a name

  For ill-digested thought;

  But after pondering much

To this conclusion I at last have come:

  Life is uncertain.

  This truth I have written deep

  In my reflective midriff

  On tablets not of wax,

Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there

For many reasons: Life, I say, is not

  A stranger to uncertainty.

Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls

  This fact did I discover,

Nor did the Delphic tripod bark it out

  Nor yet Dodona.

Its native ingenuity sufficed

  My self-taught diaphragm.

 

[Antistrophe]

 

  Why should I mention

The  Inachaean daughter, loved of Zeus?
  Her whom of old the gods,

  More provident than kind,

Provided with four hoofs, two horns, one tail

  A gift not asked for,

  And sent her forth to learn

  The unfamiliar science

  Of how to chew the cud.

She therefore all about the Argive fields

Went cropping pale green grass and nettle-tops,

  Nor did they disagree with her.

But yet, how'er nutritious, such repasts

  I do not hanker after:

Never may Cypris for her seat select

  My dappled liver!

Why should I mention Io? Why indeed?

  I have no notion why.

 

But now does my boding heart,

Unhired, unaccompanied, sing

A strain not meet for the dance,

Yea even the palace appears

To my yoke of circular eyes

(The right, nor omit I the left)

Like a slaughterhouse, so to speak

Garnished with wooly deaths

And many shipwrecks of cows.

 

I therefore in a Cissian strain lament

  And to the rapid,

Loud, linen-tattering thumps upon my chest

  Resounds in concert

The battering of my unlucky head.

 

ERIPHYLA [within]:
 

O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw;

And that in deed and not in word alone.

 

CHO.

 

I thought I heard a sound with the house

Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.

 

ERI.

 

He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,

Once more: he purposes to kill me dead.

 

CHO.

 

I would not be reputed rash, but yet

I doubt if all be gay within the house.

 

ERI.

 

O! O!  another stroke! That makes the third,

He stabs me to the heart against my wish.

 

CHO.

 

If that be so, thy state of health is poor;

But thine arithmetic is quite correct.

 

-A. E. Housman

 

Well, I did have The Shropshire Lad off the shelf the other day, and in it was folded this photocopy of 'Fragment of a Greek Tragedy'. I was laughing out loud, and the Other Reader said, what? So I had to hand over my copy.

 

It's not so hard to find this on the Internet these days, but once upon a time it was passed around like samizdat among classicists. Apparently while Housman didn't mind it circulating, he did feel it was not something to be profited from, and it's not generally included with his poetry. There are several versions, the first one written when he was 24 which appeared in his former high school's literary magazine. This is a later version. One semester I was reading Aeschylus' Agamemnon with my favorite undergraduate teacher, and she asked, did I know this? I did not. This photocopy was ready for me at our next class.

 

There really was an Alcmaeon by Aeschylus, which is lost. Alcmaeon was the son of one of the Seven Against Thebes, and his mother Eriphyla encouraged his father Amphiaraus to join that assault even though everybody knew perfectly well it was going to fail and Amphiaraus was going to die. In this Alcmaeon returns to kill his mother, which will lead to the usual Greek tragedy sort of outcome. Aeschylus was considered a bit of a windbag even by the ancients: see Aristophanes' Frogs.

 

Housman does it all properly, too: the dialog is in iambics, as it would be in the original, and he uses a choral meter for strophe and antistrophe. The ancient Greeks located thought and feelings differently. While we might have our hearts broken or feel something in our gut, for the ancient Greeks thought occurred in the diaphragm and the liver was where you felt the deeper emotions. Hence Cypris--a cult title for Aphrodite--should stay away from the speaker's liver.