LAS MISMAS GUERRAS/ THE SAME WARS

Hace ms de 3000 aos los Atridas, con el pretexto de rescatar a la bella Helena, llevaron a los griegos a una largusima guerra para asediar la rica ciudad de Ilin (Troya). Siete siglos ms tarde el dramaturgo griego Esquilo describa estos hechos en su tragedia Agamenn. Casi 2500 aos despus de que se escribieran nada parece haber cambiado. Los clsicos lo son porque saben captar y expresar la esencia de lo que les rodea, de lo ms bello, de lo ms sublime, pero tambin de las mayores crueldades e injusticias. Over 3000 years ago the Atrides, ostensibly to rescue the beautiful Helen, drove the Greeks to a very long war to besiege the wealthy city of Ilium (Troy). Seven centuries later, the Greek playwright Aeschylus described these events in his tragedy Agamemnon. Nearly 2,500 years after they wrote it, nothing seems to have changed. The classical authors know the best way to capture and express the essence of what surrounds them, the most beautiful, the most sublime, but also the greatest cruelties and injustices.

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Someone said that the gods do not trouble themselves to remember mortals who trample underfoot the grace of things not to be touched. But that man was impious! Now it stands revealed! The penalty for reckless crime is ruin when men breathe a spirit of pride above just measure, because their mansions teem with more abundance than is good for them. Alguien ha dicho que los dioses no se dignan ocuparse de aquellos que han pisoteado la majestad de las cosas intocables. Quien lo dijo no era un ser piadoso: porque brota, prolfica, la Maldicin que se abate sobre los osados, sobre quienes alientan metas que superan la justa medida, cuando sus casas desbordan de abundancia.

Ares barters the bodies of men for gold; he holds his balance in the contest of the spear; and back from Ilium to their loved ones he sends a heavy dust passed through his burning, a dust cried over with plenteous tears, in place of men sending well made urns with ashes. Ares, que cambia por oro la sangre de las vctimas, sostiene la balanza en la guerra, y desde Troya devuelve a sus familias un puado de polvo calcinado, amargo y triste, urnas rellenas de ceniza en lugar de hombres vigorosos.

Esquilo, Agamenn, 369-380 y 437-444