Page:House of Atreus 2nd ed (1889).djvu/84

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Once and again, O thou, Destroyer named,

Thou hast destroyed me, thou, my love of old! The cries of Cassandra need special explanation. Apollo, the god who had endowed her with prophetic power, and then, angered by her rejection of his suit, caused her prophecy to be disbelieved—was called, i.e., god of streets or ways; and it was usual to erect a rough statue to him at particular points of a road. No doubt such a statue was to be seen in front of the palace of Atreus. Apollo also, as a name, is, or at any rate closely resembles, the Greek word for "Destroyer" (familiar to readers of "Pilgrim's Progress" as Apollyon). It will be seen therefore how much method is in the madness of Cassandra. She sees the statue of Apollo the way-god, and cries aloud of the weary way he has sent her to her doom, himself the Destroyer first of her fame, and now of her life. Her death, and that of Agamemnon, are actually present to her vision, though in confused forms; and the ancient ills of the house of Atreus, her own happy childhood, the recent fall of Troy, the spectres of Thyestes' children, the vengeful god tearing from her the prophetic robe, the fate of Clytemnestra herself in after days—all pass before her; then, with a piteous cry of utter pathos over the state of mortal men, she goes within the palace, to confront her foreseen doom. The office of a translator, never a very hopeful one, becomes despair itself in the endeavour to reproduce this scene. The ravings of Lear have not its terror, nor those of Ophelia or Gretchen its pathos. The language has put away the besetting sin of Æschylus' earlier dramas—a certain grandiose and stilted character: here it is alternately wild with the actual inspiration of prophecy, and piteous with the sense of weakness, of the inevitable doom, of the —"the worst of agonies, to know and yet to avail nought." The cadence is sometimes one long sigh,—

. sometimes a voice broken with thick sobs,—

sometimes strong and queenly with pride and scorn,—

sometimes frantic with hysterical terror,—