“My Greek is clear but no one believes me.” – Cassandra in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, translated by Ted Hughes

Aeschylus’s Agamemnon is a tangled web of beautiful, complicated Greek. 

The first tragedy in the trilogy, The Oresteia, is so famous that you can find it at a Barnes and Noble in the heartland.  And since the poetry section is minuscule, I was thrilled to come across Robert Fagles’ brilliant translation (Penguin). 

There are, of course, many excellent translations. Some readers swear by the Lattimore and Grene series, published by the University of Chicago.  And I love this series: the brilliant, accurate translations are by classicists.

My favorite, however, is Ted Hughes’s translation, which is considered a “version.” His spare, direct style captures the spirit of the tragedy – maybe even “tragedy” – and though it is not literal, it translates the grief and horror of the more sinuous, abstruse Greek.

Before I say more about the translations, let me talk about my obsession with Cassandra.

Of the three main characters in Agamemnon, or four, counting the chorus of old men,  I am most interested in Cassandra, the Trojan princess who foresees the future but is never believed. Don’t you sometimes feel that way? Isn’t it exasperating?

She is traumatized by war, every bit as much as the soldiers.  Enslaved by Agamemnon, the Greek king who fought the Trojan War for 10 years, Cassandra is forced to return with him to Argos and is beside him in the chariot when it draws up in front of his palace. His murderous wife, Clytemnestra, all smiles, awaits him.  Determined to wreak vengeance on Agamemnon for the brutal sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia to the gods, Clytemnestra will kill him in the bath.

Cassandra’s “gift” of prophecy is poisoned by the loss of family and country.  How could she save her family?  She could not – and yet she could not dam the flood of foreknowledge.  And despite the horror of her visions, she can do nothing to help Agamemnon or herself.

Like Cassandra, many women’s words are ignored and underestimated.  We may not live in war-torn countries, but the world is violent. The critic and writer Diana Trilling wrote in her memoir that people never believed her. And, yes, I have encountered, if not disbelief, the realization of being underestimated.

Once I interviewed a man for a newsletter as a favor to an overwhelmed friend. He called later to say how impressed he was by the short piece – which I had forgotten about – and how surprised, because he had thought I was incompetent.  I did not need that barbed compliment – which was actually an insult.

 Cassandra also had to cope with insults and disbelief.

The great poet Ted Hughes and the prize-winning translator, Robert Fagles, capture Casssandra’s speeches in very different styles.   

Here is Ted Hughes.

Nothing could block the flight of my prophecy.
Her towers not enough.
The beasts slaughtered daily on every altar
Not enough
Prayers, shields and the strong warriors behind them -
None of them enough 
To deflect my prophecy.
Nobody believed me.

And here is Fagles, whose more abstruse translation is much closer to theGreek.

Oh the grief, the grief of the city
ripped to oblivion.
Oh the victims,
the flocks my father burned at the wall,
rich herds in flames... no cure for the doom
that took our city after all, and I, 
her last ember, I go down with her.

Hughes’s version might be more powerful in a modern production of the play – not that I’ve seen any production of Agamemnon. But I am torn, because I also feel the necessity to stay close to the Greek, to understand the Greeks.

Perhaps it’s a matter of taste.