Four Tragedies and Octavia (27 page)
Read Four Tragedies and Octavia Online
Authors: Seneca
NERO
: My sister's life â and her detested head.
PREFECT
: I am stunned, insensible with fear and horror!
NERO
: You hesitate?
PREFECT
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â You doubt my loyalty?
NERO
: If you would spare my foe.
PREFECT
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Womanâ a foe?
NERO
: If charged with crime.
PREFECT
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Whose evidence convicts her?
NERO
: The mob's revolt.
PREFECT
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Hotheads; whose power can rule them?
NERO
: His who could stir them up.
PREFECT
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Not even he.
NERO
: A woman can, by nature taught deceit
And armed with every artifice of evil,
But not with strength â so, not invincible,
Not proof against the breaking power of fear
Or punishment; and punishment, though late,
Shall overtake this too long guilty woman
Whose crime stands plainly proven. Plead no more;
Give me no more advice; obey your orders.
Have her deported to a distant shore
By sea, and executed instantly;
So that the tumult of my wrath may rest.
*
CHORUS
: O fatal wind of popularity,
That has destroyed so many!
How propitiously
It breathes to fill the traveller's sails,
And waft him on his way, but all too soon
Drops, and deserts him on the angry sea.
Why was the mother of the Gracchi doomed
To mourn her sons? Because they were destroyed
By too much popularity, too much
Of common love; for they were noble,
Eloquent, upright and true,
Shrewd statesmen, men of courage firm.
And by the same fate fell
Livius, not to be saved
By public rank or sanctity of home.
1
To tell of more
Our present griefs forbid.
With their own eyes our people now may see
One whom but yesterday they had preferred
To be her brother's consort, queen
Of her late father's court,
A weeping captive dragged away
To punishment and death.
Happy lies poverty, content, unseen
Under her humble roof.
The high house shakes
More often to the winds of heaven
Or falls to Fortune's stroke.
*
OCTAVIA
:
1
Where? To what place of banishment
Am I condemned? What is the emperor's will,
Or hers, his queen â if her hard heart
Can soften and be won
By pity for my suffering;
If she will let me live?
Or if she means to crown my misery
With death, is it too little vengeance
To let me die on my own country's soil?
Ah, but I have no hope of life.â¦
I am lost⦠the ship, I see, the ship
My brother has prepared⦠the same
On which his mother sailed⦠for me, his sister,
His banished wife!
Where is the power of piety?
Where are the gods? They are no more.
Fell Fury rules the world.
What eyes have tears enough to weep
For all my ills?
What nightingale can sing
My song of sorrow?
Ah, would that Fate had given me her wings!
Swift wings would take me far from all my griefs,
Far from the cruel world of man
And his destroying hand.
In some wild wood, alone, I'd sit
Upon a slender branch, to cry
My sorrows in a voice of lamentation.
CHORUS
: Fate rules all mortal men; not one of us
Can count his footing firm and permanent
Amid the many accidents that Time,
Our enemy, lays in our way.
Take courage, then,
From the example of the many griefs
Already suffered by the women of your name.
Yours is no harder fate.
Let us remember first
Agrippa's daughter,
1
of Augustus' house,
A Caesar's wife, and mother of nine children.
Her fame was a bright star to all the world;
And though her womb had laboured to bring forth
So many pledges of a peaceful union,
She was to suffer whips,
Chains, banishment, bereavement,
Tortures, and lingering death.
Livia,
1
wife of Drusus, fortunate
In marriage, fortunate in motherhood,
Fell to a crime and to her punishment.
By the same way went Julia,
2
her daughter;
But not till after many years,
Her guilt unproven, was she slain.
Then your own mother; what a power was hers
When she was mistress of the emperor's house,
Loved by her husband, and in children blest.
She fell to her own servant's mastery,
To die upon a ruthless soldier's sword.
And that great lady, who could once have hoped
To be a queen in heaven, Nero's mother:
Was not she too assaulted
First by a ruffian sailor's hand,
Then mutilated with a sword, condemned
To a slow death by her inhuman son?
OCTAVIA
: As that cold-hearted lord is sending me
To outer darkness and the ghostly shades.
What can I hope for from delay?
Take me away to die,
You whom the lot of life
Has made my masters. Gods in heaven!â¦
O fool! What use to pray
To powers that hate you?⦠Gods of hell,
To you I pray,
To goddesses of Erebus, whose wrath
Can punish sin. I pray to you, my father,
Who worthily endured such death and pain:
1
A death I do not shrink from.
Come, hoist sail!
Let us away to sea!
Spread all your canvas to the winds
And, helmsman, steer for Pandataria.
CHORUS
: And may the gentle Zephyr's kindly breath
That bore Iphigenia tenderly,
Wrapped in a cloak of cloud, unto her death
At the dread Virgin's altar, carry thee
To Dian's shrine, beyond all suffering.
Kinder than ours are those barbarian lands,
Aulis and Tauris; to their gods they bring
Tribute of strangers' lives; Rome loves to see
The blood of her own children on her hands.
Exeunt
(
a
)
PASSAGES PROM THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS
The dates are those of the first publication of each translation, prior to their collection in
The Tenne Tragedies
edited by Thomas Newton in 1581.
1
TROAS
,
by Jasper Heywood
(1559), 203â18,
with much rearrange ment and interpolation:
What tyme our sayles we should have spread, uppon Sygeon seas,
With swift returne from long delay, to seeke our homeward ways.
Achilles rose whose only hand hath geven Greekes the spoyle
Of Troia sore annoyde by him, and leveld with the soyle,
With speede requiting his abode and former long delay,
At Scyros yle, and Lesbos both amid the Aegean sea.
Til he came here in doubt it stoode of fall or sure estate,
Then though ye hast to graunt his wil ye shall it geve to late.
Now have the other captaynes all the pryce of their manhood
What els reward for his prowesse then her al onely blood?
Are his desertes think you but light, that when he might have fled,
And passing Pelyus yeares in peace, a quiet life have led,
Detected yet his mother's craftes, forsooke his woman's weede,
And with his weapons prov'd himselfe a manly man indeed:
The King of Mysia, Telephos what woulde the Greekes with-stand,
Comming to Troy, forbidding us the passage of his land:
To late repenting to have felt Achilles heavy stroke,
Was glad to crave his health agayne where he his hurt had toke:
For when his sore might not be salv'd as told Apollo playne,
Except the speare that gave the hurte, restoared help agayne.
Achilles plasters cur'd his cuttes, and sav'd the King alive:
His hand both might and mercy knew to slay and then revive.
2
Id. 229â33:
What bootes to blase the brute of him whom trumpe of fame doth show,
Through all the coastes where Caicus floud with swelling stream doth flow?
The ruthful ruine of these realmes so many townes bet downe,
Another man would glory count and worthy great renowne.
But thus my father made his way and these his journeys are,
And battayles many one he fought whyle warre he doth prepare.
3
Id. 250â91:
The onely fault of youth it is not to refraine his rage
The Fathers bloud already sturres in Pryams
1
wanton age:
Somtime Achilles grievous checkes I bare with pacient hart,
The more thou mayst, the more thou oughtst to suffer in good part.
Whereto would yee with slaughtred bloud a noble spirit stayne?
Thinke what is meete the Greekes to do, and Troyans to sustayne.
The proude estate of tyranny may never long endure.
The King that rules with modest meane of safety may be sure.
The higher step of princely state that fortune hath us signd
The more behov'th a happy man humility of mynd
And dread the chaunge that chaunce may bring, whose gifts so soone be lost
And chiefly then to feare the Gods, whyle they thee favour most.
In beating down that warre hath wonne, by proofe I have ben taught,
What pompe and pride in twink of eye, may fall and come to naught.
Troy made me fierce and proude of mynde, Troy makes me frayd withal:
The Greekes now stand wher Troy late fel, ech thing may have his fal.
Sometyme I graunt I did myselfe, and Sceptors proudly beare,
The thing that might advaunce my hart makes me the more to feare
Thou Priam perfit proofe presentst thou art to mee eftsones:
A cause of pride, a glasse of feare a mirrour for the nones,
Should I accompt the sceptors ought but glorious vanity
Much like the borrowed brayded hayre, the face to beautify.
One sodayne chaunce may turne to naught, and mayme the might of men
With fewer than a thousand shippes, and years in lesse then ten.
Not she that guydes the slipper wheele of Fate, doth so delay:
That she to al possession grauntes, of ten yeares settled stay.
With leave of Greece I wil confesse, I would have wonne the towne
But not with ruine thus extreme to see it beaten downe.
But loe the battel made by night and rage of fervent mynd,
Could not abide the brydling bitte that reason had assignd.
The happy sword once staind with bloud unsatiable is,
And in the darke the fervent rage doth strike the more amis.
Now we are wreakt on Troy so much let all that may remayne.
A Virgin borne of Princes bloud for ofrring to be slayne
And geven be to stayne the tombe and ashes of the ded,
And under name of wedlocke see the guiltles bloud be shed,
I wil not graunt for myne should bee thereof both fault and blame,
Who when he may, forbiddeth not offence: doth wil the same.
4
Id. 814(â
CHORUS
altered by the translatour'; in fact borrowed, in part, from
Hippolytus, 959 ff.):
O Jove that leadst the lampes of fire, and deckst with flaming starres the sky,
Why is it ever thy desire to care their course so orderly?
That nowe the frost the leaves hath worne, and now the spring oth close the tree.
Now fiery Leo rypes the corne, and stil the soyle should chaunged be?
But why art thou that all dost guide, betweene whose hands the poale doth sway,
And at whose wil the Orbs do slyde, careles of mans estate alway?
Regarding not the goodmans case, not caryng how to hurt the yll.
Chaunce beareth rule in every place and turneth mans estate at will.
She gives the wronge the upper hand, the better part she doth oppresse,
She makes the highest low to stand, her Kingdom all is order-lesse.
    (
and six more lines on the matter of the play
)
5
Id. 997 (
a mistranslation
):
In meane time haps this deepe distress my cares can know no calme,
I ran the race with Priamus, but he hath won the palme.
6
Id. 1009â23 (
the original is repetitive, but the translator expands it further
):
A comfort is to mans calamity
A doleful flocke of felowes in distres.
And sweete to him that mournes in miserie
To here them wayle whom sorowes like oppres
In deepest care his griefe him bites the les,
That his estate bewayles not all alone,
But seeth with him the teares of many one.
For still it is the chief delight in woe,
And joy of them that sonke in sorrowes are,
To see like fates by fall to many moe,
That may take part of all their wofull fare,
And not alone to be opprest with care.
There is no wight of woe that doth complayne,
When all the rest do like mischaunce sustayne.
In all this world if happy man were none,
None (though he were) would thinke himselfe awretch,