Explore "Agamemnon" by Aeschylus on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Scene represents a space in front of the Palace of Agamemnon in Argos, with an Altar of Zeus in the centre and many other altars at the sides. On a high terrace of the roof stands a Watchman. It is night.
Watchman2: / This waste of year-long vigil I have prayed / God for some respite, watching elbow-stayed, / As sleuthhounds watch, above the Atreidae's hall, / Till well I know yon midnight festival / Of swarming stars, and them that lonely go, / Bearers to man of summer and of snow, / Great lords and shining, throned in heavenly fire. / And still I await the sign, the beacon pyre / That bears Troy's capture on a voice of flame / Shouting o'erseas. So surely to her aim / Cleaveth a woman's heart, man-passionèd! / And when I turn me to my bed -- my bed / Dew-drenched and dark and stumbling, to which near / Cometh no dream nor sleep, but alway Fear / Breathes round it, warning, lest an eye once fain / To close may close too well to wake again; / Think I perchance to sing or troll a tune / For medicine against sleep, the music soon / Changes to sighing for the tale untold / Of this house, not well mastered as of old. / Howbeit, may God yet send us rest, and light / The flame of good news flashed across the night. He is silent, watching. Suddenly at a distance in the night there is a glimmer of fire, increasing presently to a blaze. / Ha! / O kindler of the dark, O daylight birth / Of dawn and dancing upon Argive earth / For this great end! All hail! -- What ho, within! / What ho! Bear word to Agamemnon's queen / To rise, like dawn, and lift in answer strong / To this glad lamp her women's triumph-song, / If verily, verily, Ilion's citadel / Is fallen, as yon beacons flaming tell. / And I myself will tread the dance before / All others; for my master's dice I score / Good, and mine own to-night three sixes plain. Lights begin to show in the Palace. / Oh, good or ill, my hand shall clasp again / My dear lord's hand, returning! Beyond that / I speak not. A great ox hath laid his weight / Across my tongue. But these stone walls know well, / If stones had speech, what tale were theirs to tell. / For me, to him that knoweth I can yet / Speak; if another questions I forget.