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 AESCHYLUS' 
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND 
 
 AND THE 
 
 SEVEN AGAINST THEBES. 
 
 LITERALLY TRANSLATED, 
 WITH CRITICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES, 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY, B.A. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 EDWAKD B BOOKS, JE, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER, 
 1022 MARKET STREET.
 
 Copyright, 1897, by DAVID McKAY.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 .ZEscHYLUs, the first of the great Grecian writers of 
 tragedy, was born at Eleusis, in 525 B.C. He was the 
 son of Euphorion, who was probably a wealthy owner of 
 rich vineyards. The poet's early emploj T ment was to 
 watch the grapes and protect them from the ravages of 
 men and other animals, and it is said that this occupation 
 led to the development of his dramatic genius. It is 
 more easy to believe that it was responsible for the devel- 
 opment of certain other less admirable qualities of the 
 poet. 
 
 His first appearance as a tragic writer was in 499 B.C., 
 and in 484 B.C. he won a prize in the tragic contests. 
 He took part in the battle of Marathon, in 490 B.C., and 
 also fought in the battle of Salamis, in 480 B.C. He 
 visited Sicily twice, and probably spent some time in that 
 country, as the use of many Sicilian words in his later 
 plays would indicate. 
 
 There is a curious story related as to his death, which 
 took place at Gela in 456 B. C. It is said that an eagle, 
 mistaking his bald head for a stone, dropped a tortoise 
 upon it in order to break its shell, and that the blow quite 
 killed ^Eschylus. Too much reliance should not be 
 placed upon this story. 
 
 It is not known how many plays the poet wrote, but 
 
 2056199
 
 vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 only seven have been preserved to us. That these trage- 
 dies contain much that is undramatic is undoubtedly true, 
 but it must be remembered that at the time he wrote, 
 jEschylus found the drama in a very primitive state . The 
 persons represented consisted of but a single actor, who 
 related some narrative of mythological or legendary inter- 
 est, and a chorus, who relieved the monotony of such a 
 performance by the interspersing of a few songs and 
 dances. To JEschylus belongs the credit of creating the 
 dialogue in the Greek drama by the introduction of a 
 second actor. 
 
 In the following pages will be found a translation of 
 two of the poet's greatest compositions, viz., the "Pro- 
 metheus Chained" and the "Seven Against Thebes." 
 The first of these dramas has been designated " The sub- 
 limest poem and simplest tragedy of antiquity," and the 
 second, while probably an earlier work and containing 
 much that is undramatic, presents such a splendid spec- 
 tacle of true Grecian chivalry that it has been regarded as 
 the equal of anything which the author ever attempted. 
 
 The characters represented in the "Prometheus" are 
 Strength, Force, Vulcan, Prometheus, lo, daughter of 
 Inachus, Ocean and Mercury. The play opens with the 
 appearance of Prometheus in company with Strength, 
 Force and Vulcan, who have been bidden to bind Prome- 
 theus with adamantine fetters to the lofty cragged rocks 
 of an untrodden Scythian desert, because he has offended 
 Jupiter by stealing fire from heaven and bestowing it 
 upon mortals. 
 
 Vulcan is loth to obey the mandates of Jove, but urged 
 on by Strength and Force and the fear of the consequences
 
 INTRODUCTION. vii- 
 
 which disobedience will entail, with mighty force drives 
 the wedges into the adamantine rocks and rivets the cap- 
 tive with galling shackles to the ruthless crags. 
 
 Prometheus, being bound and left alone, bemoans his 
 fate and relates to the chorus of nymphs the base ingrati- 
 tude of Jove, who through his counsels having over- 
 whelmed the aged Saturn beneath the murky abyss of 
 Tartarus, now rewards his ally with indignities because 
 he had compassion upon mortals. 
 
 Ocean then comes to Prometheus, offering sympathy 
 and counsel, urging him not to utter words thus harsh 
 and whetted, lest Jupiter seated far aloft may hear them 
 and inflict upon him added woes to which his present suf- 
 ferings will seem but child's play. 
 
 Ocean having taken his departure, Prometheus again 
 complains to the chorus and enumerates the boons which 
 he has bestowed upon mankind, with the comment that 
 though he has discovered such inventions for mortals, he 
 has no device whereby he may escape from his present 
 misfortune. 
 
 lo, daughter of Inachus, beloved by Jove, but forced, 
 through the jealous hatred of Juno, to make many wan- 
 derings, then appears, and beseeches Prometheus to dis- 
 cover to her what time shall be the limit of her sufferings. 
 Prometheus accedes to her request and relates how she 
 shall wander over many lands and seas until she reaches 
 the city of Canopus, at the mouth of the Nile, where she 
 shall bring forth a Jove-begotten child, from whose seed 
 shall finally spring a dauntless warrior renowned in arch- 
 ery, who will liberate Prometheus from his captivity and 
 accomplish the downfall of Jove.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Io then resumes her wanderings, and Mercury, sent by 
 Jove, comes to question Prometheus as to the nuptials 
 which he has boasted will accomplish the overthrow of the 
 ruler of the Gods. Him Prometheus reviles with oppro- 
 brious epithets, calling him a lackey of the Gods, and re- 
 fuses to disclose anything concerning the matter on which 
 he questions him. The winged God, replying, threatens 
 him with dire calamities. A tempest will come upon him 
 and overwhelm him with thunderbolts, and a bloodthirst- 
 ing eagle shall feed upon his liver. Thus saying, he de- 
 parts, and immediately the earth commences to heave, 
 the noise of thunder is heard, vivid streaks of lightning 
 blaze throughout the sky and a hurricane the onslaught 
 of Jove sweeps Prometheus away in its blast. 
 
 The " Seven against Thebes " includes in its cast of 
 characters Eteocles, King of Thebes, Antigone and Is- 
 mene, Sisters of the King, a Messenger and a Herald. 
 The play opens with the siege of Thebes. Eteocles ap- 
 pears upon the Acropolis in the early morning, and exhorts 
 the citizens to be brave and be not over-dismayed at the 
 rabble of alien besiegers. A messenger arrives and an- 
 nounces the rapid approach of the Argives. Eteocles 
 goes to see that the battlements and the gates are prop- 
 erly manned, and during his absence the chorus of The- 
 ban maidens set up a great wail of distress and burst 
 forth with violent lamentations. Eteocles, returning, up- 
 braids them severely for their weakness and bids them 
 begone and raise the sacred auspicious shout of the paean 
 as an encouragement to the Theban warriors. He then 
 departs to prepare himself and six others to meet in com- 
 bat the seven chieftains who have come against the city.
 
 INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 He soon re-enters, and at the same time comes the 
 messenger from another part of the city with fresh tid- 
 ings of the foe and the arrangement of the invaders 
 around the walls of the city. By the gate of Proetus 
 stands the raging Tydeus with his helm of hairy crests 
 and his buckler tricked out with a full moon and a gleam- 
 ing sky full of stars, against whom Eteocles will marshal 
 the wary son of Astacus, a noble and a modest youth, who 
 detests vain boastings and yet is not a coward. 
 
 By the Electron gate is stationed the giant Campaneus, 
 who bears about him the device of a naked .man with a 
 gleaming torch in his hands, crying out " I will burn the 
 city." Against him will be pitted the doughty Polyphon- 
 tes, favored by Diana and other gods. 
 
 Against the gate of Neis the mighty Eteoclus is wheel- 
 ing his foaming steeds, bearing a buckler blazoned with a 
 man in armor treading the steps of a ladder to his foe- 
 man's tower. Megareus, the offspring of Creon, is the 
 valiant warrior who will either pay the debt of his nurture 
 to his land or will decorate his father's house with the 
 spoils of the conquered Eteoclus. 
 
 The fiery Hippomedon is raging at the gate of Onca 
 Minerva, bearing upon his buckler a Typhon darting forth 
 smoke through his fire-breathing mouth, eager to meet 
 the brave Hyperbius, son of (Enops, who has been se- 
 lected to check his impetuous onslaught. 
 
 At the gate of Boreas the youthful Parthenopaeus takes 
 his stand, a fair-faced stripling, upon whose face the 
 youthful down is just making its appearance. Opposed 
 to him stands Actor, a man who is no braggart, but who 
 will not submit to boastful tauntings or permit the rash 
 intruder to batter his way into the city. 
 i*
 
 x INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The mighty Amphiarus is waiting at the gate of Ho- 
 molbis, and in the meantime reproaches his ally, Tydeus, 
 calling him a homicide, and Polynices he rebukes with 
 having brought a mighty armament into his native city. 
 Lasthenes, he of the aged mind but youthful form, is the 
 Thebian who has been chosen to marshal his forces against 
 this invader. 
 
 At the seventh gate stands Polynices, brother of Eteo- 
 cles, bearing a well-wrought shield with a device con- 
 structed upon it of a woman leading on a mailed warrior, 
 bringing havoc to his paternal city and desirous of becom- 
 ing a fratricide. Against him Eteocles will go and face 
 him in person, and leader against leader, brother against 
 brother and foeman against foeman, take his stand. 
 
 Eteocles then departs to engage in battle, and soon 
 after the messenger enters to announce that six of the 
 Theban warriors have been successful, but that Polynices 
 and Eteocles have both fallen, slain by each other's hand. 
 
 Antigone and Ismene then enter, each bewailing the 
 death of their brothers. A herald interrupts them in 
 the midst of their lamentations to announce to them the 
 decree of the senate, which is that Eteocles, on account 
 of his attachment to his country, though a fratricide, 
 shall be honored with fitting funeral rites, but that Poly- 
 nices, the would-be overturner of his native city, shall be 
 cast out unburied, a prey to the dogs. 
 
 Against this decree Antigone rebels, and with her final 
 words announces her unalterable intention of burying 
 her brother in spite of the fate which awaits her disobe- 
 dience to the will of the senate.
 
 PROMETHEUS CHAINED. 
 
 PROMETHEUS having, by his attention to the wants of men, 
 provoked the anger of Jove, is bound down in a cleft of a 
 rock in a distant desert of Scythia. Here he not only relates 
 the wanderings, but foretells the future lot of lo, and like- 
 wise alludes to the fall of Jove's dynasty. Disdaining to 
 explain his meaning to Mercury, he is swept into the abyss 
 amid terrific hurricane and earthquake. 
 
 PERSONS REPEESENTED. 
 
 STRENGTH. 
 FORCE. 
 VULCAN. 
 PROMETHEUS. 
 
 CHORUS OF NYMPHS, DAUGH- 
 TERS OF OCEAN. 
 10, DAUGHTER OF INACHUS. 
 MERCURY. 
 
 STRENGTH, FORCE, VULCAN, PROMETHEUS. 
 STRENGTH. 1- \Ve are come to a plain, the distant bound- 
 
 1 Lucian, in his dialogue entitled " Prometheus," or " Cau- 
 casus," has given occasional imitations of passages in this play, 
 not, however, sufficient to amount to a paraphrase, as Dr. 
 Blomfield asserted. Besides, as Lucian lays the scene at 
 Caucasus, he would rather seem to have had the "Prometheus 
 solutus" in mind. (See Schutz, Argum.) But the ancients 
 commonly made Caucasus the seat of the punishment of Pro- 
 metheus, and, as ^Eschylus is not over particular in his geogra- 
 phy, it is possible that he maybe not altogether consistent with 
 himself. Lucian makes no mention of Strength and Force, but 
 brings in Mercury at the beginning of the dialogue. More- 
 over, Mercury is represented in an excellent humor, and ral- 
 lies Prometheus good-naturedly upon his tortures. Thus, 6,
 
 12 PROMETHEUS. [2-15. 
 
 ary of the earth, to the Scythian track, to an untrodden 1 
 desert. Vulcan, it behooves thee that the mandates, which 
 thy Sire imposed, be thy concern to bind this daring 
 wretch 2 to the lofty-cragged rocks, in fetters of adamantine 
 chains that can not be broken ; for he stole and gave to mor- 
 tals thy honor, the brilliancy of fire [that aids] all arts. 3 
 Hence for such a trespass he must needs give retribution to 
 the gods, that he may be taught, to submit to the sovereignty 
 of Jupiter, and to cease from his philanthropic disposition. 
 VULCAN. Strength and Force, as far as you are con- 
 cerned, the mandate of Jupiter has now 4 its consummation, 
 aud there is no farther obstacle. But I have not the courage 
 
 he says, t\> tXf. (caraTrrJjo-trai <5t fifij xat b derS; atraKtpwv TO rjjrap, 
 a>r iravra \oir ivri rir (caXrjr- Kai ti>jir)\avo TrXairriKrjS". In regard 
 to the place where Prometheus was bound, the scene doubtless 
 represented a ravine between two precipices rent from each 
 other, with a distant prospect of some of the places mentioned 
 in the wanderings of lo. (See Schutz, ibid.) But as the whole 
 mention of Scythia is an anachronism, the less said on this 
 point the better. Compare, however, the following remarks 
 of Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 140, "The legeud of Prome- 
 theus, and the unbinding of the chains of the fire-bringing 
 Titan on the Caucasus by Hercules in journeying eastward 
 the ascent of lo from the valley of the Hybrites [See Griffiths' 
 note on v. 717, on vfipurrfis" irorapds-, which must be a proper 
 name] toward the Caucasus; and the myth of Phryxus and 
 Helle all point to the same path on which Phoauician naviga- 
 tors had earlier adventured." 
 
 1 Dindorf, in his note, rightly approves the elegant reading 
 a^ps-o'j (=Airav9pwoii) in lieu of the frigid aparov. See Blomf. 
 and Surges. As far as this play is concerned, the tract was not 
 actually impassable, but it was so to mortals. 
 
 2 AEa>pyo~=/5a<5>upyo~, iravovpyoT, iraKoCpyoS". Cf. Liddell and 
 Linwood, s. v. The interpretation and derivation of the etym. 
 magn. o rds bvBpo-nuv TrXdor/jr, is justly rejected by Dindorf, who 
 remarks that ^Eschylus paid no attention to the fable respect- 
 ing Prometheus being the maker of mankind. 
 
 3 The epithet Travrc\.vov, which might perhaps be rendered 
 "art-full," is explained by v. 110 and 254. 
 
 * See Jelf. Gk. Gr. 720, 2d.
 
 I6-34-] PROMETHEUS. 13 
 
 to bind perforce a kindred god to this weather-beaten ravine. 
 Yet in every way it is necessary for me to take courage for 
 this task ; for a dreadful thing it is to disregard 1 the direc- 
 tions of the Sire. 2 Lofty-scheming son of right-counseling 
 Themis, unwilling shall I rivet thee unwilling in indissoluble 
 shackles to this solitary rock, where nor voice nor form of any 
 one of mortals shalt thou see ; s but slowly scorched by the 
 bright blaze of the sun thou shalt lose the bloom of thy 
 complexion ; and to thee joyous shall night in spangled 
 robe* veil the light ; and the sun again disperse the hoar- 
 frost of the morn ; and evermore shall the pain of the pres- 
 ent evil waste thee ; for no one yet born shall release thee. 
 Such fruits hast thou reaped from thy friendly disposition to 
 mankind. For thou, a god, not crouching beneath the wrath 
 of the gods, hast imparted to mortals honors beyond what 
 was right. In requital whereof thou shalt keep sentinel on 
 this cheerless rock, standing erect, sleepless, not bending a 
 knee : 5 and many laments and unavailing groans shalt thou 
 utter ; for the heart of Jupiter is hard to be entreated ; and 
 every one that has newly-acquired power is stern. 
 
 1 There seems little doubt that c$<apia$eiv is the right read- 
 ing. Its ironical force answers to Terence's "probe curasti." 
 
 2 I have spelled Sire in all places with a capital letter, as 
 Jove is evidently meant. See my note on v. 49. 
 
 3 This is not a mere zeugma, but is derived from the suppo- 
 sition that sight was the chief of the senses, and in a manner 
 included the rest. (Cf. Plato Tim. p. 533, C. D.) See the ex- 
 amples adduced by the commentators. Schrader on Musseus 
 5, and Boyes, Illustrations to Sept. c. Th. 98. Shakespeare has 
 burlesqued this idea in his exquisite buffoonery, Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, Act v. sc. 1. 
 
 Pyramus. I see a voice : now will I to the chink, 
 To spy an I can hear my Thisby's face. 
 * Claudian de rapt. Pros. II. 363. " Stellantes nox picta sinus." 
 See on Soph. Trach. 94. 
 
 5 I.e., having no rest. Soph. (Ed. Col. 19. <cXa xdpijjov rou<5' 
 iv' ajtorou Trt'rpsu.
 
 14 PROMETHEUS. [35-54- 
 
 ST. Well, well ! Why art thou delaying and vainly com- 
 miserating ? Why loathest thou not the god that is most 
 hateful to the gods, who has betrayed thy prerogative to 
 mortals ? 
 
 VUL. Relationship and intimacy are of great power. 
 
 ST. I grant it but how is it possible to disobey the Sire's 
 word ? Dreadest thou not this the rather ? 
 
 VUL. Ay truly thou art ever pitiless and full of boldness. 
 
 ST. For to deplore this wretch is no cure [for him]. But 
 concern not thou thyself vainly with matters that are of no 
 advantage. 
 
 VUL. O much detested handicraft ! 
 
 ST. Wherefore loathest thou it ! for with the ills now 
 present thy craft in good truth is not at all chargeable. 
 
 VUL. For all that, I would that some other had obtained 
 this. 
 
 ST. Every thing has been achieved except for the gods to 
 rule ; for no one is free save Jupiter. 1 
 
 VUL. I know it and I have nothing to say against it. 2 
 
 ST. Wilt thou not then bestir thyself to cast fetters about 
 this wretch, that the Sire may not espy thee loitering ? 
 
 VUL. Ay, and in truth you may see the manacles ready. 
 
 1 The difficulties of this passage have been increased by no 
 one of the commentators perceiving the evident opposition be- 
 tween Seal and Zcv~. As in the formula S> ZEU xal Qeoi (cf. Plato 
 Protag. p. 193, E.; Aristoph. Plut. I. with Bergler's note; Ju- 
 lian Caes. p. 51, 59, 76; Dionys. Hal. A. E. II. p. 80, 3281, 20, 
 ed. Sylb.) so, from the time of Homer downward, we find Zci>- 
 constantly mentioned apart from the other gods (cf. II. I. 423, 
 494), and so also with his epithet narijp, as in v. 4, 17, 20, etc.) 
 (Eustath, on II. T. I., p. Ill, 30, on ZsuS" a\\nxoi> niv OTrXur Trarhp 
 i\ex9n). There is evidently, therefore, the opposition expressed 
 in the text; "'Tis not for the other gods (i.e. roir aXXoir eioir) 
 to rule, but for Jove alone." This view was approved, but not 
 confirmed, by Paley. 
 
 3 See Dindorf.
 
 55-74-] PROMETHEUS. 15 
 
 ST. Take them, and with mighty force clench them with 
 the mallet about his hands : rivet him close to the crags. 
 
 VUL. This work of ours is speeding to its consummation 
 and loiters not. 
 
 ST. Smite harder, tighten, slacken at no point, for he hath 
 cunning to find outlets even from impracticable difficulties. 
 
 VUL. This arm at all events is fastened inextricably. 
 
 ST. And now clasp this securely, that he may perceive 
 himself to be a duller contriver than Jupiter. 
 
 VUL. Save this [sufferer], no one could with reason find 
 fault with me. 
 
 ST. Now by main force rivet the ruthless fang of an ada- 
 mantine wedge right through his breast. 1 
 
 VUL. Alas ! alas ! Prometheus, I sigh over thy sufferings. 
 
 ST. Again thou art hanging back, and sighest thou over 
 the enemies of Jupiter ? Look to it, that thou hast not at 
 some time to mourn for thyself. 
 
 VUL. Thou beholdest a spectacle ill-sighted to the eye. 
 
 ST. I behold this wretch receiving his deserts. But fling 
 thou these girths round his sides. 
 
 VUL. I must needs do this ; urge me not very much. 
 
 ST. Ay, but I will urge thee, and set thee on too. Move 
 downward, and strongly link his legs. 
 
 VUL. And in truth the task is done with no long toil. 
 
 ST. With main force now smite the galling fetters, since 
 stern indeed is the inspector of this work. 
 
 VUL. Thy tongue sounds in accordance with thy form. 
 
 ST. Yield thou to softness, but taunt not me with ruth- 
 lessness and harshness of temper. 
 
 1 Paley well observes that there is no objection to this inter- 
 pretation, for if Prometheus could endure the daily gnawing 
 of his entrails by the vulture, the rivets wouldn't put him to 
 much trouble. Lucian, # 6, is content with fastening his hands 
 to the two sides of the chasm.
 
 16 PROMETHEUS. [75-104. 
 
 VTTL. Let us go ; since lie hath the shackles about his 
 limbs. 
 
 ST. There now be insolent ; and after pillaging the pre- 
 rogatives of the gods, confer them on creatures of a day. 
 In what will mortals be able to alleviate these agonies of 
 thine ? By no true title do the divinities call thee Prome- 
 theus ; for thou thyself hast need of a Prometheus, by means 
 of which you will slip out of this fate. 1 
 
 [Exeunt STRENGTH and FORCE. 
 
 PROMETHEUS. O divine aether, and ye swift-winged 
 breezes, and ye fountains of rivers, and countless dimpling 2 
 of the waves of the deep, and thou earth, mother of all 
 and to the all-seeing orb of the Sun I appeal ; look upon me, 
 what treatment I, a god, am enduring at the hand of the 
 gods ! Behold with what indignities mangled I shall have 
 to wrestle through time of years innumerable. Such an 
 ignominious bondage hath the new ruler of the immortals 
 devised against me. Alas ! alas ! I sigh over the present 
 suffering, and that which is coming on. How, where must 
 a termination of these toils arise ? And yet what is it I am 
 saying? I know beforehand all futurity exactly, and no 
 suffering will come upon me unlooked-for. But I needs 
 must bear my doom as easily as may be, knowing as I do, 
 that the might of Necessity can not be resisted. 
 
 1 TV\TIS is retained by Dindorf, but rsxvns is defended by 
 Griffiths and Paley. I think, with Burges, that it is a gloss 
 
 Upon Ilpo/irjOtuj. 
 
 2 So Milton, P. L. iv. 165. 
 
 Cheer'd with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles. 
 Lord Byron (opening of the Giaour) : 
 
 There mildly dimpling Ocean's cheek 
 Eeflects the tints of many a peak, 
 Caught by the laughing tides that lave 
 Those Edens of the eastern wave.
 
 105-132.] PROMETHEUS. 17 
 
 But yet it is not possible for me either to hold my peace, 
 or not to hold my peace touching these my fortunes. For 
 having bestowed boons upon mortals, I am enthralled un- 
 happy in these hardships. And I am he that searched out 
 the source of fire, by stealth borne-off inclosed in a fennel- 
 rod, 1 which has shown itself a teacher of every art to mor- 
 tals, and a great resource. Such then as this is the ven- 
 geance that I endure for my trespasses, being riveted in 
 fetters beneath the naked sky. 
 
 Hah ! what sound, what ineffable odor 2 hath been wafted 
 to me, emanating from a god, or from mortal, or of some 
 intermediate nature? Has there come anyone to the re- 
 mote rock as a spectator of my sufferings, or with what in- 
 tent ! 3 Behold me an ill-fated god in durance, the foe of 
 Jupiter, him that hath incurred the detestation of all the 
 gods who frequent the court of Jupiter, by reason of my 
 excessive friendliness to mortals. Alas ! alas ! what can 
 this hasty motion of birds be which I again hear hard by 
 me ? The air too is whistling faintly with the whirrings of 
 pinions. Every thing that approaches is to me an object of 
 dread. 
 
 CHORUS. Dread thou nothing ; for this is a friendly band 
 that has eome with the fleet rivalry of their pinions to this 
 
 1 Literally "filling a rod," TrXtfpuroj here being active. Cf. 
 Agam. 361, arijj iraxaA&jrou. Choeph. 296, Trap<ji8j.pT<a n6pu>. Pers. 
 105, TroXe/ioos irvpyoSaixTovf. See also Blomfield, and Person on 
 Hes. 1117, vapBriZ is "ferula" or "fennel-giant," the pith of 
 which makes excellent fuel. Blomfield quotes Proclus on 
 Hesiod, Op. 1, 52, "the vapOnl preserves flame excellently, having 
 a soft pith inside, that nourishes, but can not extinguish the 
 flame." For a strange fable connected with this theft, see 
 .Elian Hist. An. VI. 51. 
 
 2 On the preternatural scent supposed to attend the presence 
 of a deity, cf Eur. Hippol. 1391. with Monk's note, Virg. .<En. I. 
 403, and La Cerda. See also Boyes's Illustrations. 
 
 3 On th cf. Jelf, Gk. Gr. 723, 2.
 
 18 PROMETHEUS. [133-167. 
 
 rock, after prevailing with difficulty on the mind of our 
 father. And the swiftly-wafting breezes escorted me ; for 
 the echo of the clang of steel pierced to the recess of our 
 grots, and banished my demure-looking reserve ; and I sped 
 without my sandals in my winged chariot. 
 
 PR. Alas ! alas ! ye offspring of prolific Thetys, and 
 daughters of Ocean your sire, who rolls around the whole 
 earth in his unslumbering stream ; look upon me, see clasped 
 in what bonds I shall keep an unenviable watch on the top- 
 most crags of this ravine. 
 
 CH. I see, Prometheus : and a fearful mist full of tears 
 darts over mine eyes, as I looked on thy frame withering 
 on the rocks 1 in these galling adamantine fetters : for new 
 pilots are the masters of Olympus ; and Jove, contrary to 
 right, lords it with new laws, and things aforetime had in 
 reverence he is obliterating. 
 
 PR. Oh would that he had sent me beneath the earth, and 
 below into the boundless Tartarus of Hades that receives the 
 dead, after savagely securing me in indissoluble bonds, so 
 that no god at any time, nor any other being, had exulted 
 in this my doom. Whereas now, hapless one, I, the sport of 
 the winds, suffer pangs that gladden my foes. 
 
 CH. Who of the gods is so hard-hearted as that these 
 things should be grateful to him ? Who is there that sym- 
 pathizes not with thy sufferings, Jove excepted? He, in- 
 deed, in his wrath, assuming an inflexible temper, is ever- 
 more oppressing the celestial race ! nor will he cease before 
 that either he shall have sated his heart, or some one by 
 some stratagem shall have seized upon his sovereignity that 
 will be no easy prize. 
 
 1 Elmsley's reading, irerpa . . . rate, is preferred by Dindorf, 
 and seems more suitable to the passage. But if we read raiafc, 
 it will come to the same thing, retaining irirpaiT.
 
 168-202.] PROMETHEUS. 19 
 
 PR. In truth hereafter the president of the immortals 1 
 shall have need of me, albeit that I am ignominiously suffer- 
 ing in stubborn shackles, to discover to him the new plot by 
 which he is to be despoiled of his sceptre and his honors. 
 But neither shall he win me by the honey -tongued charms of 
 persuasion ; nor will I at any time, crouching beneath his 
 stern threats, divulge this matter, before he shall have re- 
 leased me from my cruel bonds, and shall be willing to yield 
 me retribution for this outrage. 
 
 CH. Thou indeed both art bold, and yieldest nought to 
 thy bitter calamities, but art over free in thy language. But 
 piercing terror is worrying my soul ; for I fear for thy for- 
 tunes. How, when will it be thy destiny to make the haven 
 and see the end of these thy sufferings? for the son of Saturn 
 has manners that supplication cannot reach, and an inexo- 
 rable heart. 
 
 PR. I know that Jupiter is harsh, and keeps justice to 
 himself ; but for all that he shall hereafter be softened in 
 purpose, when he shall be crushed in this way ; and, after 
 calming his unyielding temper with eagerness will he here- 
 after come into league and friendship with me that will 
 eagerly [welcome him]. 
 
 CH. Unfold and speak out to us the whole story, from 
 what accusation has Jupiter seized thee, and is thus disgrace- 
 fully and bitterly tormenting thee. Inform us, if thou be 
 in no respect hurt by the recital. 
 
 PR. Painful indeed are these things for me to tell, and 
 painful too for me to hold my peace, and in every way 
 grievous. As soon as the divinities began discord, and 
 a feud was stirred up among them with one another one 
 
 1 Surely we should read this sentence interrogatively, as in 
 V. 99, T'! TTOT p6xO(.ov Xpf) ripfiara r<D>)<5' eirtrei\ai ; although the 
 
 editions do iiot agree as to that passage. So Burges.
 
 20 PROMETHEUS. [203-231. 
 
 party 1 wishing to eject Saturn from his throne, in order 
 forsooth that Jupiter might be king, and others expediting 
 the reverse, that Jupiter might at no time rule over the 
 gods : then I, when I gave the best advice, was not able to 
 prevail upon the Titans, children of Uranus and Terra ; but 
 they, contemning in their stout spirits wily schemes, fancied 
 that without any trouble, and by dint of main force, they 
 were to win the sovereignty. But it was not once only that 
 my mother Themis, and Terra, a single person with many 
 titles, had forewarned me of the way in which the future 
 would be accomplished ; how it was destined, that, not 
 by main force, nor by the strong hand, but by craft the 
 victors should prevail. When, however, I explained such 
 points in discourse, they deigned not to pay me any regard 
 at all. Of the plans which then presented themselves to 
 me, the best appeared that I should take my mother and 
 promptly side with Jupiter, who was right willing [to 
 receive us]. And 'tis by means of my counsels that the 
 murky abyss of Tartarus overwhelms the antique Saturn, 
 allies and all. After thus being assisted by me, the tyrant 
 of the gods hath recompensed me with this foul recom- 
 pense. For somehow this malady attaches to tyranny, not 
 to put confidence in its friends. But for your inquiries 
 upon what charge is it that he outrages me, this I will make 
 clear. As soon as he has established himself on his father's 
 throne, he assigns forthwith to the different divinities each 
 his honors, and he was marshaling in order his empire ; but 
 of woe-begone mortals he made no account, but wished, after 
 
 1 Nominativus Pendens. Soph, Antig. 259, A<5yo< 6' iv d\\fi- 
 \oiatv ippdOow KOLKOI, <pv\a% i\iyx,<av <j>v\aKa, where see Wunder, and 
 Elmsley on Eur. Heracl. 40. But it is probably only the o\nn<t 
 Ka6' 6'Aoi/ KOI /jcpor, on which see Jelf, Gk. Gr. 478, aud the same 
 thing takes place with the accusative, as in Autig. 21, sq. 561. 
 See Erfurdt on 21.
 
 232-260.] PROMETHEUS. 21 
 
 having annihilated the entire race, to plant another new 
 one. And these schemes no one opposed except myself. 
 But I dared : I ransomed mortals from being utterly de- 
 stroyed, and going down to Hades. 'Tis for this, in truth, 
 that I am bent by sufferings such as these, agonizing to 
 endure, and piteous to look upon. I that had compassion 
 for mortals, have myself been deemed unworthy to obtain 
 this, but mercilessly am thus coerced to order, a spectacle 
 inglorious to Jupiter. 
 
 CH. Iron-hearted and formed of rock too, Prometheus, is 
 he, who condoles not with thy toils : for I could have wished 
 never to have beheld them, and now, when I behold them, I 
 am pained in my heart. 
 
 PR. Ay, in very deed I am a piteous object for friends 
 to behold. 
 
 CH. And didst thou chance to advance even beyond this ? 
 
 PR. Yes ! I prevented mortals from foreseeing their 
 doom. 
 
 CH. By finding what remedy for this malady ? 
 
 PK. I caused blind hopes to dwell within them. 
 
 CH. In this thou gavest a mighty benefit to mortals. 
 
 PR. Over and above these boons, however, I imparted 
 fire to them. 
 
 CH. And do the creatures of a day now possess bright fire ? 
 
 PB. Yes from which they will moreover learn thoroughly 
 many arts. 
 
 CH. Is it indeed on charges such as these that Jupiter is 
 both visiting thee with indignities, and in no wise grants 
 thee a respite from thy pains ? And is no period to thy toils 
 set before thee ? 
 
 PR. None other assuredly, but when it may please him. 
 
 CH. And how shall it be his good pleasure ? What hope 
 is there? Seest thou not that thou didst err ? but how thou
 
 22 PROMETHEUS. [261-295. 
 
 didst err, I can not relate with pleasure, and it would be a 
 pain to you. But let us leave these points, and search thou 
 for some escape from thine agony. 
 
 PK. 'Tis easy, for any one that hath his foot unentangled 
 by sufferings, both to exhort and to admonish him that is 
 in evil plight. But I knew all these things willingly, will- 
 ingly I erred, I will not gainsay it ; and in doing service to 
 mortals I brought upon myself sufferings. Yet not at all did 
 I imagine, that, in such a punishment as this, I was to wither 
 away upon lofty rocks, meeting with this desolate solitary 
 crag. And yet wail ye not over my present sorrows, but 
 after alighting on the ground, list ye to the fortune that is 
 coming on, that ye may learn the whole throughout. Yield 
 to me, yield ye, take ye a share in the woes of him that is 
 now suffering. Hence in the same way doth calamity, roam- 
 ing to and fro, settle down on different individuals. 
 
 CH. Upon those who are nothing loth hast thou urged 
 this, Prometheus : and now having with light step quitted 
 my rapidly-wafted chariot-seat, and the pure aether, high- 
 way of the feathered race, I will draw near to this rugged 
 ground : and I long to hear the whole tale of thy sufferings. 
 Enter OCEAN. 
 
 I am arrived at the end of a long journey, 1 having passed 
 over [it] to thee, Prometheus, guiding this winged steed of 
 mine, swift of pinion, by my will, without a bit ; and, rest 
 assured, I sorrow with thy misfortunes. For both the tie of 
 kindred thus constrains me, and, relationship apart, there 
 is no one on whom I would bestow a larger share [of my 
 regard] than to thyself. And thou shalt know that these 
 words are sincere, and that it is not in me vainly to do lip- 
 service ; for come, signify to me in what it is necessary for 
 
 1 See Linwood's Lexicon, s. v. a/^i'/Scj, whose construing I 
 have followed.
 
 296-321.] PROMETHEUS. 23 
 
 me to assist thee ; for at no time shalt thou say that thou 
 hast a stancher friend than Oceanus. 
 
 PR. Hah ! what means this ? and hast thou too come to 
 be a witness of my pangs? How hast thou ventured, after 
 quitting both the stream that bears thy name, and the rock- 
 roofed self-wrought 1 grots, to come into the iron teeming 
 land? Is it that you may contemplate my misfortunes, and 
 as sympathizing with my woes that thou hast come ? Be- 
 hold a spectacle, me here the friend of Jupiter, that helped 
 to establish his sovereignty, with what pains I am bent by 
 him, 
 
 Oc. I see, Prometheus, and to thee, subtle as thou art, I 
 wish to give the best counsel. Know thyself, and assume to 
 thyself new manners ; for among the gods too there is a new 
 monarch. But if thou wilt utter words thus harsh and 
 whetted, Jupiter mayhap, though seated far aloft, will hear 
 thee, so that the present bitterness of sufferings will seem to 
 thee to be child's play. But, O hapless one ! dismiss the 
 passion which thou feelest, and search for a deliverance from 
 these sufferings of thine. Old-fashioned maxims these, it 
 may be, I appear to thee to utter ; yet such becomes the wages 
 of the tongue that talks too proudly. But not even yet art 
 thou humble, nor submittest to ills ; and in addition to those 
 that already beset thee, thou art willing to bring others upon 
 thee. Yet not, if at least thou takest me for thy instructor, 
 
 1 Cf. Virg. 2En. I. 167, "Intus aquae dulces, vivoque sedilia 
 saxo." 
 
 "The rudest habitation, ye might think 
 That it had sprung from earth self-raised, or grown 
 Out of the living rock." Wordsworth's Excursion, 
 Book vi. 
 
 Compare a most picturesque description of Diana's cave, in 
 Apul. Met. II. p. 116 ; Elm. Telemachus. Book I. ; Uudine, ch. 
 viii. ; Lane's Arabian Nights, vol. iii. p. 385.
 
 24 PROMETHEUS. [322-348. 
 
 wilt thou stretch out thy leg against the pricks ; as thou seest 
 that a harsh monarch, and one that is not subject to control, 
 is lording it. And now I for my part will go, and will essay, 
 if I be able, to disinthrall thee from these thy pangs. But be 
 thou still, nor be over impetuous in thy language. What ! 
 knowest thou not exactly, extremely intelligent as thou art, 
 that punishment is inflicted on a froward tongue ? 
 
 PR. I give thee joy, because that thou hast escaped cen- 
 sure, after taking part in and venturing along with me in all 
 things. And now leave him alone, and let it not concern 
 thee. For in no wise wilt thou persuade him ; for he is not 
 open to persuasion. And look thou well to it that thou take 
 not harm thyself by the journey. 
 
 Oc. Thou art far better calculated by nature to instruct 
 thy neighbors than thyself : I draw my conclusion from fact, 
 and not from word. But think not for a moment to divert 
 me from the attempt. For I am confident, yea, I am confi- 
 dent, that Jupiter will grant me this boon, so as to release 
 thee from these pangs of thine. 
 
 PR. In part I commend thee, and will by no means at any 
 time cease to do so. For in zeal to serve me thou lackest 
 nothing. But trouble thyself not ; for in vain, without be- 
 ing of any service to me, 1 wilt thou labor, if in any respect 
 thou art willing to labor. But hold thou thy peace, and 
 keep thyself out of harm's way J for I, though I be in mis- 
 fortune, would not on this account be willing that sufferings 
 
 1 Although Dindort has left SIRS ANOS before the lines begin- 
 ning with ov dnra, yet as he in his notes, p. 54, approves of the 
 opinion of Elmsley (to which the majority of critics assent), I 
 have continued them to Prometheus. Dindorf (after Burges) 
 remarks that the particles oil <5<?ra deceived the copyists, who 
 thought that they pointed to the commencement of a new 
 speaker's address. He quotes Soph. (Ed. C. 433; Eur. Alcest. 
 555; Heracl. 507, sqq., where it is used as a continuation of a 
 previous argument, as iu the present passage.
 
 349-366.] PROMETHEUS. 25 
 
 should befall as many as possible. No, indeed, since also 
 the disasters of my brother Atlas gall my heart, who is sta- 
 tioned in the western regions, sustaining on his shoulders the 
 pillar of heaven and of earth, a burden not of easy grasp. 
 I commiserated too when I beheld the earth-born inmate of 
 the Cilician caverns, a tremendous prodigy, the hundred- 
 headed impetuous Typhon, overpowered by force, who with- 
 stood all the gods, hissing slaughter from his hungry jaws ; 
 and from his eyes there flashed a hideous glare, as though 
 he would perforce overthrow the sovereignty of Jove. But 
 the sleepless shaft of Jupiter came upon him, the descending 
 thunderbolt breathing forth flame, which scared him out of 
 his presumptuous bravadoes ; for having been smitten to his 
 very soul he was crumbled to a cinder, and thunder-blasted 
 in his prowess. And now, a helpless and paralyzed form is 
 he lying hard by a narrow frith, pressed down beneath the 
 roots of ..Etna. 1 And, seated on the topmost peaks, Vulcan 
 
 1 It has been remarked that JEschylus had Pindar in mind, 
 see Pyth, I. 31, and VIII. 20. On this fate of Enceladns cf. 
 Philostrat. de V. Apoll. V. 6 ; Apollodorus I. ; Hygin. Fab. 152; 
 aud for poetical descriptions, Cornel. Severus 2Etua, 70, " Gur- 
 gite Trinacrio morientem Jupiter ^Etna Obruit Enceladum, 
 vasti qui pondere montis ^stuat, et patulis exspirat faucibus 
 ignes." Virg. .<En. III. 578; Valer. Flacc. II. 24; Ovid. Met. 
 V. Fab. V. 6 ; Claudian, de raptu Pros. I. 155 ; Orph. Arg. 1256. 
 Strabo, I. p. 42, makes Hesiod acquainted with these eruptions. 
 (See Goettling on Theog. 821.) But Prometheus here utters a 
 prophecy concerning an eruption that really took place during 
 the life of ^schylus, Ol. 75, 2, B C. 479. Cf. Thucydides III. 
 116; Cltiver, Sicil. Antig. p. 104, and Dindorfs clear and 
 learned note. There can be little doubt but Enceladus aud Ty- 
 phon are only different names for the same monster. Burges 
 has well remarked the resemblance between the Egyptian Ty- 
 pho and the Grecian, and considers them both as "two out- 
 ward forms of one internal idea, representing the destructive 
 principle of matter opposed to the creative." I shall refer the 
 reader to Plutarch's entertaining treatise on Isis and Osiris ; but
 
 26 PROMETHEUS. [367-386. 
 
 forges the molten masses, whence there shall one day burst 
 forth floods devouring with fell jaws the level fields of 
 fruitful Sicily : with rage such as this shall Typhon boil 
 over in hot artillery of a never-glutted fire-breathing storm ; 
 albeit he hath been reduced to ashes by the thunder-bolt of 
 Jupiter. But thou art no novice, nor needest thou me for 
 thine instructor. Save thyself as best thou knowest how ; 
 but I will exhaust my present fate until such time as the 
 spirit of Jupiter shall abate its wrath. 
 
 Oc. Knowest thou not this then, Prometheus, that words 
 are the physicians of a distempered feeling 7 1 
 
 PR. True, if one seasonably soften down the heart, and 
 do not with rude violence reduce a swelling spirit. 
 
 Oc. Ay, but in foresight along with boldness' 2 what mis- 
 chief is there that thou seest to be inherent? inform me. 
 
 PK. Superfluous trouble and trifling folly. 
 
 Oc. Suffer me to sicken in this said sickness, since 'tis of 
 the highest advantage for one that is wise not to seem to be 
 wise. 
 
 PR. (Not so, for) this trespass will seem to be mine. 
 
 to quote authorities from Herodotus down to the Apologetic 
 Fathers, would be endless. 
 
 1 I think, notwithstanding the arguments of Dindorf, that 
 <5pyffr voc-owrjr means "a mind distempered," and that A<5yo< 
 mean "arguments, reasonings." Boyes, who always shows a 
 poetical appreciation of his author, aptly quotes Spenser's 
 Fairy Queen, b. 2, c. 8, st. 26. 
 
 "Words well dispost, 
 Have secrete powre t' appease inflamed rage." 
 
 And Samson Agonistes : 
 
 "Apt words have power to swage 
 The tumors of a troubled inind." 
 
 The reading of Plutarch, ^vxvr appears to be a mere gloss. 
 3 Intell ige audaciam prudentid conjunctam. Blomfield.
 
 387-421.] PROMETHEUS. 27 
 
 Oc. Thy language is plainly sending me back to my 
 home. 
 
 PR. Lest thy lamentation over me bring thee into ill-will. 
 
 Oc. What with him who hath lately seated himself on the 
 throne that ruleth over all ? 
 
 PR. Beware of him lest at any time his heart be moved 
 to wrath. 
 
 Oc. Thy disaster, Prometheus, is my monitor. 
 
 PR. Away ! withdraw thee, keep thy present determina- 
 tion. 
 
 Oc. On me, hastening to start, hast thou urged this in- 
 junction ; for my winged quadruped flaps with his pinions 
 the smooth track of zether ; and blithely would he recline 
 his limbs in his stalls at home. [Exit OCEAN. 
 
 CH. I bewail thee for thy lost fate, Prometheus. A flood 
 of trickling tears from my yielding eyes has bedewed my 
 cheek with its humid gushings ; for Jupiter commanding this 
 thine unenviable doom by laws of his own, displays his 
 spear appearing superior o'er the gods of old. 1 And now 
 the whole land echoes with wailing they wail thy stately 
 and time-graced honors, and those of thy brethren ; and all 
 they of mortal race that occupy a dwelling neighboring on 
 hallowed Asia 2 mourn with thy deeply-deplorable sufferings : 
 the virgins that dwell in the land of Colchis too, fearless 
 of the fight, and the Scythian horde who possess the most 
 remote regions of earth around lake Mreotis ; and the war- 
 like flower of Arabia, 3 who occupy a fortress on the craggy 
 
 1 ai'x//a is rendered "indoles" by Paley (see on Ag. 467). 
 Linwood by " authority," which is much nearer the truth, as 
 the spear was anciently used for the sceptre. Mr. Surges op- 
 portunely suggests Pindar's eyxor SdxoTov, which he gives to 
 Jupiter, Nem. vi. 90. 
 
 z Asia is here personified. 
 
 8 All commentators, from the scholiast downward, are natu-
 
 28 PROMETHEUS. [422-444. 
 
 heights in the neighborhood of Caucasus, a warrior-host, 
 clamoring amid sharply-barbed spears. 
 
 One other god only, indeed, have I heretofore beheld in 
 miseries, the Titan Atlas, subdued by the galling of adaman- 
 tine 1 bonds, who evermore in his back is groaning beneath 2 
 the excessive mighty mass of the pole of heaven. And the 
 billow of the deep roars as it falls in cadence, the depth 
 moans, and the murky vault of Hades rumbles beneath the 
 earth, and the fountains of the pure streaming rivers wail 
 for his piteous pains. 
 
 PR. Do not, I pray you, suppose that I am holding my 
 peace from pride or self-will ; but by reflection am I gnawed 
 to the heart, seeing myself thus ignominiously entreated. 3 
 And yet who but myself denned completely the prerogative 
 for these same new gods? But on these matters I say noth- 
 ing, for I should speak to you already acquainted with these 
 things. But for the misfortunes that existed among mortals, 
 hear how I made them, that aforetime lived as infants, 
 rational and possessed of intellect. 4 And I will tell you, 
 
 rally surprised at this mention of Arabia, when Prometheus is 
 occupied in describing the countries bordering on the Euxine. 
 Surges conjectures 'A/3tip<or, which he supports with consider- 
 able learning. But although the name 'ApApt6cs~ (mentioned 
 by Suidas) might well be given to those whodwelt in unknown 
 parts of the earth, from the legendary travels of Abaris with 
 hisarrow, yet the epithet apctov ui/flor seems to point to some 
 really existing nation, while 'Adapter would rather seem pro- 
 verbial. Till, then, we are more certain, ^Eschylus must still 
 stand chargeable with geographical inconsistency. 
 
 1 I have followed Burges and Dindorf, although the latter 
 retains dffa^airoWroir in his text. 
 
 3 Why Dindorf should have adopted Hermann's frigid 
 {<irovreyd^ct, is not easily seen. The reader will, however, find 
 Griffiths' foot-note well deserving of inspection. 
 
 8 On vpov<ri\ovnevov, see Dindorf. 
 
 4 Among the mythographi discovered by Maii, and subse- 
 quently edited by Bode, the reader will find some allegorical
 
 445-459-] PROMETHEUS. 29 
 
 having no complaint against mankind, as detailing the kind- 
 ness of the boons which I bestowed upon them : they who at 
 first seeing saw in vain, hearing they heard not. But, like 
 to the forms of dreams, for a long time they used to huddle 
 together all things at random, and naught knew they about 
 brick-built 1 and sun-ward houses, nor carpentry; but they 
 dwelt in the excavated earth like tiny emmets in the sunless 
 depths of caverns. And they had no sure sign either of 
 winter, or of flowery spring, or of fruitful summer ; but they 
 used to do every thing without judgment, until indeed I 
 showed to them the risings of the stars and their settings, 2 
 hard to be discerned. 
 
 And verily I discover for them Numbers, the surpassing 
 all inventions, 3 the combinations too of letters, and Memory, 
 
 explanations of these benefits given by Prometheus. See 
 Myth, primus I. 1, and tertius 3, 10, 9. They are, however, 
 little else than compilations from the commentary of Servius 
 on Virgil, and the silly, but amusing, mythology of Fulgeutius. 
 On the endowment of speech and reason to men by Prome- 
 theus, cf. Them 1st Or. xxxvi. p. 323, C. D. and xxvi. p. 338, C. 
 ed. Hard.; and for general illustrations, the notes of Wasse on 
 Sallust, Cat. sub init. 
 
 1 Brick-building is first ascribed toEuryalus and Hyperbius, 
 two brothers at Athens, by Pliny, H. N. vii. 56, quoted by 
 Stanley. After caves, huts of beams, filled in with turf-clods, 
 were probably the first dwellings of men. See Mallet's North- 
 ern Antiquities, p. 217, ed. Bohn. This whole passage has been 
 imitated by Moschion apud Stob. Eel. Phys. I. 11, while the 
 early reformation of men has ever been a favorite theme for 
 poets. Cf. Eurip. Suppl. 200 sqq.; Manilius I. 41, sqq.; and 
 Bronkhus, on Tibnll. I. 3, 35. 
 
 2 Cf. Apul. de Deo Socr. $ II. ed. mese, " quos probe callet, qui 
 signorum ortus et obitus comprehendit," Catullus (in a poem 
 imitated from Callimachus) carm. 67, 1. "Onmia qui magni 
 dispexit lumina mundi, Qui stellarum ortus comperit atque 
 obitus." See on Agam. 7. 
 
 3 On the following discoveries consult the learned and en- 
 tertaining notes of Stanley.
 
 30 PROMETHEUS. [460-487. 
 
 effective mother-nurse of all arts. I also first bound with 
 yokes beasts submissive to the collars ; and in order that 
 with their bodies they might become to mortals substitutes 
 for their severest toils, I brought steeds under cars obedient 
 to the rein, 1 a glory to pompous luxury. And none other 
 than I invented the canvas-winged chariots of mariners that 
 roam over the ocean. After discovering for mortals such 
 inventions, wretch that I am, I myself have no device 
 whereby I may escape from my present misery. 
 
 CH. Thou hast suffered unseemly ills, baulked in thy dis- 
 cretion thou art erring ; and like a bad physician, having 
 fallen into a distemper thou art faint-hearted, and, in refer- 
 ence to thyself, thou canst not discover by what manner of 
 medicines thou mayest be cured. 
 
 PR. When thou nearest the rest of my tale, thou wilt won- 
 der still more what arts and resources I contrived. For the 
 greatest if that any one fell into a distemper, there was 
 no remedy, neither in the way of diet, nor of liniment, nor of 
 potion, but for lack of medicines they used to pine away to 
 skeletons, before that I pointed out to them the composition 2 
 of mild remedies, wherewith they ward off all their maladies. 
 Many modes too of the divining art did I classify, and was 
 the first that discriminated among dreams those which are 
 destined to be a true vision ; obscure vocal omens 3 too I made 
 
 1 Jjyayov 0iXii'iour ) i.e. tSort ^iXrjviowS" tlvai. 
 
 2 See the elaborate notes of Blomfield and Burges, from 
 whence all the other commentators have derived their infor- 
 mation. Kpdo-ir is what Scribouius Largus calls " compositio." 
 Cf. Ehodii Lexicon Scribon, p. 364-5; Serenus Sammonicus 
 "synthesis." The former writer observes in his preface, p. 2, 
 "est enim haec pars (compositio, scilicet) medicinseut maxime 
 necessaria, ita certe antiquissima, et ob hoc primum celebrata 
 atque illustrata. Siquidem verum est, antiques herbis ac radi- 
 cibus earum corporis vitia curasse." 
 
 3 Apul. de Deo Socr. $ 20, ed, mese, " ut vidcmus plerisque usu
 
 488-s 1 1.] PROMETHEUS. 31 
 
 known to them ; tokens also incidental on the road, and the 
 flight of birds of crooked talons I clearly defined, both those 
 that are in their nature auspicious, and the ill-omened, and 
 what the kind of life that each leads, and what are their 
 feuds and endearments 1 and intercourse one with another : 
 the smoothness too of the entrails, and what hue they must 
 hare to be acceptable to the gods, the various happy forma- 
 tions of the gall and liver, and the limbs enveloped in fat : 
 and having roasted the long chine I pointed out to mortals 
 the way into an abstruse art ; and I brought to light the fiery 
 symbols 2 that were aforetime wrapt in darkness. Such in- 
 deed were these boons ; and the gains to mankind that were 
 hidden under ground, brass, iron, silver, and gold who 
 could assert that he had discovered before me ? No one, I 
 well know, who does not mean to idly babble. And in one 
 brief sentence learn the whole at once All arts among the 
 human race are from Prometheus. 
 
 CH. Do not now serve the human race beyond what is pro- 
 fitable, nor disregard thyself in thy distress : since I have 
 good hopes that thou shalt yet Deliberated from these shac- 
 kles, and be not one whit less powerful than Jove. 
 
 PR. Not at all in this way is Fate, that brings events to 
 their consummation ordained to accomplish these things : but 
 
 venire, qni nimia ominum superstitione, non suopte corde, sed 
 alterius verbo, reguntur : et per angiporta reptantes, consilia ex 
 alienis vocibus colligunt." Such was the voice that appeared 
 to Socrates. See Plato Theog. p. 11. A. Xenoph. Apol. 12 ; Pro- 
 clus in Alcib. Prim. 13, p. 41, Creuz. See also Stanley's note. 
 
 1 On these augurial terms see Abresch. 
 
 2 Although the Vatican mythologist above quoted observes 
 of Prometheus, " deprehendit prseterea rationem fulminum, et 
 hominibns indicavit " I should nevertheless follow Stanley 
 and Blomfield, in understanding these words to apply to the 
 omens derived from the flame and smoke ascending from the 
 sacrifices.
 
 32 PROMETHEUS. [512-552. 
 
 after having been bent by countless sufferings and calamities, 
 thus am I to escape from my shackles. And art is far less 
 powerful than necessity. 
 
 CH. Who then is the pilot of necessity ? 
 
 PR. The triform Fates and the remembering Furies. 
 
 CH. Is Jupiter then less powerful than these ? 
 
 PR. Most certainly he can not at any rate escape his 
 doom. 1 
 
 CH. Why, -what is doomed for Jupiter but to reign for 
 evermore ? 
 
 PR. This thou mayest not yet learn, and do not press it. 
 
 CH. 'Tis surely some solemn mystery that thou veilest. 
 
 PR. Make mention of some other matter ; it is by no 
 means seasonable to proclaim this ; but it must be shrouded 
 in deepest concealment ; for it is by keeping this secret that 
 I am to escape from my ignominious shackles and miseries. 
 
 CH. Never may Jupiter, who directs all things, set his 
 might in opposition to my purpose : nor may I be backward 
 in attending upon the gods at their hallowed banquets, at 
 which oxen are sacrificed, beside the restless stream of my 
 sire Ocean ; and may I not trespass in my words ; but may 
 this feeling abide by me and never melt away. Sweet it is to 
 pass through a long life in confident hopes, making the 
 spirits swell with bright merriment; but I shudder as I be- 
 hold thee harrowed by agonies incalculable. . . . For not 
 standing in awe of Jupiter, thou, Prometheus, in thy self- 
 will honorest mortals to excess. Come, my friend, own how 
 boonless was the boon ; say where is any aid ? What relief 
 can come from the creatures of a day ? Sawest thou not the 
 powerless weakness, nought better than a dream, in which 
 
 1 Of. Herodot. I. 91, quoted by Blomfield : T)-,V Treirpwuivrjv fiot- 
 pr)v ddvvard ion. aTcofyvyicw icai roJ 0oj. Oil this Pythagorean 11O- 
 
 tioii of JSschylus see Stanley.'
 
 553-564-1 PROMETHEUS. 33 
 
 the blind race of men is entangled ? Never shall at any time 
 the schemes of mortals evade the harmonious system of Ju- 
 piter. This I learned by witnessing thy destructive fate, 
 Prometheus. And far different is this strain that now flits 
 toward me from the hymenaeal chant which I raised around 
 the baths and thy couch with the consent 1 of nuptials, when, 
 after having won Hesione with thy love-tokens, thou didst 
 conduct her our sister to be thy bride, the sharer of thy bed. 
 
 Enter Io. 2 
 
 What land is this ? what race ? whom shall I say I here 
 behold storm-tossed in rocky fetters ? Of what trespass is 
 the retribution destroying thee? Declare to me into what 
 part of earth I forlorn have roamed. Ah me ! alas ! alas ! 
 again the hornet 3 stings me miserable : O earth avert* the 
 
 1 Or, " in pleasure at the nuptials." See Linwood. Burges : 
 " for the one-ness of marriage." 
 
 2 No clew is given as to the form in which Io was repre- 
 sented on the stage. In v. 848, the promise ivravBa 6f> at Zewr 
 rie^aiv c/uppova does not imply any bodily change, but that Io 
 labored under a mental delusion. Still the mythologists are 
 against us, who agree in making her transformation complete. 
 Perhaps she was represented with horns, like the Egyptian 
 figures of Isis, but in other respects as a virgin, which is 
 somewhat confirmed by v. 592, /cXfcir 00<fy^a rSr povKepwirafOinoo. 
 
 3 "Gad-fly" or ''brize." See the commentators. 
 
 4 On the discrepancies of reading, see Dind. With the whole 
 passage compare Nounus, Dionys. III. p. 62, 2. 
 
 Taupo0vi)r ore rdp-rir a/iei/So^itvoio Trpoaunrov 
 fir ayi\rjv aypa"Aor i\avvtro avvvofior 'lai. 
 irat fafid^S" ayfivirvov iOnxaro fiovic6\ov "Hprj 
 irouclXov <nr\avetr<Ti KtKaa^kvov '\pyov dirajirdiS" 
 ZrivdS" dirurevTrjpa f3ooKpaip(i)v Vfitvaibiv. 
 "ii\vd? aOnfiroio rai eS~ ifOftdv Sjie xovpri, 
 6tp6a\ftovT rpofiiovaa jroAuyAjji/oio vojirjor. 
 *yu<o/3<5p<j ft ftiitiiTri "X.apaaaonivTr\ fiftaT 'lai 
 'lovujr [aAoT] olifia Kareyptupe (poirdii Xfi\!j. 
 ij\9c KOH eir * AtyvTrrov 
 
 This writer, who constantly has the Athenian dramatists in 
 2*
 
 34 PROMETHEUS. [565-590. 
 
 goblin of earth-born Argus i 1 I am terrified at the sight of 
 the neatherd of thousand eyes, for he is journeying on, 
 keeping a cunning glance, whom not even after death does 
 earth conceal ; but issuing forth from among the departed 
 he chases me miserable, and he makes me to Avander famished 
 along the shingled strand, while the sounding wax-compacted 
 pipe drones on a sleepy strain. Oh ! oh ! ye powers ! Oh ! 
 powers ! whither do my far-roaming wanderings convey me ? 
 In what, in what, O son of Saturn, hast thou, having found 
 me transgressing, shackled me in these pangs ? Ah ! ah ! 
 and art thus wearing out a timorous wretch frenzied with 
 sting-driven fear. Burn me with fire, or bury me in 
 earth, or give me for food to the monsters of the deep, and 
 grudge me not these prayers, O king ! Amply have my 
 much-traversed wanderings harassed me ; nor can I discover 
 how I may avoid pain. Hearest thou the address of the ox- 
 homed maiden ? 
 
 PR. How can I fail to hear the damsel that is frenzy- 
 driven by the hornet, the daughter of Inachus, who warms 
 
 view, pursues the narrative of lo's wanderings with an evident 
 reference to ^Eschylus. See other illustrations from the poeta 
 iu Stanley's notes. 
 
 1 The ghost of Argus was doubtless whimsically represented, 
 but probably without the waste of flour that is peculiar to 
 modern stage spectres. Perhaps, as Burges describes, "a mute 
 in a dress resembling a peacock's tail expanded, and with a 
 Pan's pipe slung to his side, which ever and anon he seems to 
 sound; and with a goad in his hand, mounted at one end with 
 a representation of a hornet or gad-fly." But this phantom, 
 like Macbeth 's dagger, is supposed to he in the mind only. 
 With a similar idea Apuleius, Apol. p. 315, ed. Elm. invokes 
 upon ^milianus in the following mild terms: " At . . . sem- 
 per obvias species mortuorum, quidquid umbrarumest usquam, 
 quidquid lemurum, quidquid manium, quidquid larvarum 
 ocnlis tuis oggerat: omnia noctium occursacula, omnia busto- 
 rum formidamina, omnia sepulchrorum terriculamenta, a qui- 
 bus tamen sevo emerito baud louge abes."
 
 591-621.] PROMETHEUS. 35 
 
 the heart of Jupiter with love, and now, abhorred of Juno, 
 is driven perforce courses of exceeding length ? 
 
 Io. From whence utterest thou the name of my father? 
 Tell me, the woe-begone, who thou art, who, I say, O hapless 
 one, that hast thus correctly accosted me miserable, and hast 
 named the heaven-inflicted disorder which wastes me, fret- 
 ting with its maddening stings ? Ah ! ah ! violently driven 
 by the famishing tortures of my boundings have I come a 
 victim to the wrathful counsels of Juno. And of the ill-fated 
 who are there, ah me ! that endure woes such as mine ? But 
 do thou clearly define to me what remains for me to suffer, 
 what salve : l what remedy there is for my malady, discover 
 to me, if at all thou knowest : speak, tell it to the wretched 
 roaming damsel. 
 
 PK. I will tell thee clearly every thing which thou desirest 
 to leam, not interweaving riddles, but in plain language, as 
 it is right to open the mouth to friends. Thou seest him 
 that bestowed fire on mortals, Prometheus. 
 
 Io. O thou that didst dawn a common benefit upon mor- 
 tals, wretched Prometheus, as penance for what offense art 
 thou thus suffering ? 
 
 PR. I have just ceased lamenting my own pangs. 
 
 Io. Wilt thou not then accord to me this boon ? 
 
 PR. Say what it is that thou art asking, for thou mightest 
 learn everything from me. 
 
 Io. Say who it was that bound thee fast in this cleft? 
 
 PR. The decree of Jupiter, but the hand of Vulcan. 
 
 Io. And for what offenses art thou paying the penalty ? 
 
 PR. Thus much alone is all that I can clearly explain to 
 thee. 
 
 1 I have followed Dindorf s elegant emendation. See his 
 note, and Blomf. on Ag. 1.
 
 36 PROMETHEUS. [622-645. 
 
 Io. At least, in addition to this, discover what time shall 
 be to me woe-worn the limit of my wanderings. 
 
 PR. Not to learn this is better for thee than to learn it. 
 
 Io. Yet conceal not from me what I am to endure. 
 
 PR. Nay, I grudge thee not this gift. 
 
 Io. Why then delayest thou to utter the whole ? 
 
 PR. 'Tis not reluctance, but I am loth to shock thy feel- 
 ings. 
 
 Io. Do not be more anxious on my account than is agree- 
 able to me. 1 
 
 PR. Since thou art eager, I must needs tell thee : attend 
 thou. 
 
 CH. Not yet, however ; but grant me also a share of the 
 pleasure. Let us first learn the malady of this maiden, from 
 her own tale of her destructive 2 fortunes ; but, for the sequel 
 of her afflictions let her be informed by thee. 
 
 PR. It is thy part, Io, to minister to the gratification of 
 these now before thee, both for all other reasons, and that 
 they are the sisters of thy father. Since to weep and lament 
 over misfortunes, when one is sure to win a tear from the 
 listeners, is well worth the while. 
 
 Io. I know not how I should disobey you ; and in a plain 
 tale ye shall learn everything that ye desire ; and yet I am 
 pained even to speak of the tempest that hath been sent upon 
 me from heaven, and the utter marring of my person, whence 
 it suddenly came upon me, a wretched creature ! For nightly 
 visions thronging to my maiden chamber, would entice me 
 
 1 After the remarks of Dindorf and Paley, it seems that the 
 above must be the sense, whether we read > with Hermann, 
 or take wr for r\ cir with the above mentioned editor. 
 
 2 Paley remarks that ra~ iro\. rv\a~ is used in the same man- 
 ner as in Pers. 453. </,0api>rtS-=" shipwrecked" (see his note), 
 or " wandering." He renders the present passage " the adven- 
 tures of her long wanderings."
 
 646-679-] PROMETHEUS. 37 
 
 with smooth words: "O damsel, greatly fortunate, why 
 dost thou live long time in maidenhood, when it is in thy 
 power to achieve a match the very noblest? for Jupiter is 
 fired by thy charms with the shaft of passion, and longs 
 with thee to share in love. But do not, my child, spurn 
 away from thee the couch of Jupiter ; but go forth to Lerna's 
 fertile mead, to the folds and ox-stalls of thy father, that 
 the eye of Jove may have respite from its longing." By 
 dreams such as these was I unhappy beset every night, until 
 at length I made bold to tell my sire of the dreams that 
 haunted me by night. And he dispatched both to Pytho 
 and Dodona 1 many a messenger to consult the oracles, that 
 he might learn what it behooved him to do or say, so as to 
 perform what was well-pleasing to the divinities. And they 
 came bringing a report back of oracles ambiguously worded, 
 indistinct, and obscurely delivered. But at last a clear re- 
 sponse came to Inachus, plainly charging and directing him 
 to thrust me forth both from my home and my country, to 
 stray an outcast to earth's remotest limits; and that, if he 
 would not, a fiery-visaged thunder-bolt would come from 
 Jupiter, and utterly blot out his whole race. Overcome by 
 oracles of Loxias such as these, unwilling did me expel and 
 exclude me unwilling from his dwelling : but the bit of 
 Jupiter 2 perforce constrained him to do this. And straight- 
 way :ny person and my mind were distorted, and horned, as 
 ye see, stung by the keenly-biting fly, I rushed with maniac 
 boundings to the sweet stream of Cerchneia, and the foun- 
 tain 3 of Lerna ; and the earth-born neatherd Argus of un- 
 
 1 With the earlier circumstances of this narrative compare 
 the beautiful story of Psyche in Apuleius, Met. IV. p. '157, sqq. 
 Elm. 
 
 2 Cf Ag. 217, T' c' dvdyica~ <5 X7ra<5"0i'. 
 
 3 xpfivriv is the elegant conjecture of Canter, approved by
 
 38 PROMETHEUS. [680-707. 
 
 tempered fierceness, kept dogging me, peering after my 
 footsteps with thick-set eyes. Him, however, an unlooked- 
 for sudden fate bereaved of life ; but I hornet-stricken am 
 driven by the scourge divine from land to land. Thou 
 hearest what has taken place, and if thou art able to say 
 what pangs there remain for me, declare them ; and do not, 
 compassionating me, warm me with false tales, for I pro- 
 nounce fabricated statements to be a most foul malady. 
 
 CH. Ah ! ah ! forbear ! Alas ! Never, never did I expect 
 that a tale [so] strange would come to my ears, or that suf- 
 ferings thus horrible to witness and horrible to endure, out- 
 rages, terrors with their two-edged goad, would chill my 
 spirit. Alas! alas! O Fate ! Fate! I shudder as I behold 
 the condition of lo. 
 
 PR. Prematurely, however, are thou sighing, and art full 
 of terror. Hold, until thou shalt also have heard the residue. 
 
 CH. Say on ; inform me fully : to the sick indeed it is 
 sweet to get a clear knowledge beforehand of the sequel of 
 their sorrows. 
 
 PR. Your former desire at any rate ye gained from me 
 easily ; for first of all ye desired to be informed by her re- 
 cital of the affliction 1 that attaches to herself. Now give ear 
 to the rest, what sort of sufferings it is the fate of this young 
 damsel before you to undergo at the hand of Juno : thou too, 
 seed of Inachus, lay to heart my words, that thou mayest be 
 fully informed of the termination of thy journey. In the 
 
 Dindorf. In addition to the remarks of the commentators, the 
 tradition preserved by Pausanias II. 15, greatly confirms this 
 emendation. He remarks, Ocpov^ &s afa o-<j>io-iv t<m rd prf/iara, 
 n\fiv TMV ev A.epvrj. It was probably somewhat proverbial. 
 
 1 I shall not attempt to enter iuto the much-disputed geog- 
 raphy of lo's wanderings. So much has been said, and to so 
 little purpose, on this perplexing subject, that to write addi- 
 tional notes would be only to furnish more reasons for doubt- 
 ing.
 
 708-738.] PROMETHEUS. 39 
 
 first place, after turning thyself from this spot toward the 
 rising of the sun, traverse unplowed fields ; and thou wilt 
 reach the wandering Scythians, who, raised from off the 
 ground, inhabit wicker dwellings on well-wheeled cars, 
 equipped with distant-shooting bows ; to whom thou must 
 not draw near, but pass on out of their land, bringing thy 
 feet to approach the rugged roaring shores. And on thy left 
 hand dwell the Chalybes, workers of iron, of whom thou must 
 needs beware, for they are barbarous, and not accessible to 
 strangers. And thou wilt come to the river Hybristes, 1 not 
 falsely so called, which do not thou cross, for it is not easy 
 to ford, until thou shalt have come to Caucasus itself, loftiest 
 of mountains, where from its very brow the river spouts 
 forth its might. And surmounting its peaks that neighbor 
 on the stars, thou must go into a southward track, where 
 thou wilt come to the man-detesting host of Amazons, who 
 hereafter shall make a settlement, Themiscyra, on the banks 
 of Thermodon, where lies the rugged Salmydessian sea- 
 gorge, a host by mariners hated, a step-dame to ships ; and 
 they will conduct thee on thy way, and that right willingly. 
 Thou shalt come too to the Cimmerian isthmus, hard by the 
 very portals of a lake, with narrow passage, which thou un- 
 dauntedly must leave, and cross the Mseotic frith ; and there 
 shall exist for evermore among mortals a famous legend 
 concerning thy passage, and after thy name it shall be called 
 the Bosphorus; and after having quitted European ground, 
 thou shalt come to the Asiatic continent. Does not then 
 the sovereign of the gods seem to you to be violent alike to- 
 ward all things? for he a god lusting to enjoy the charms of 
 
 1 Probably the Kurban. Schutz well observes that the words 
 ov i^tvo&m^of could not be applied to an epithet of the poet's own 
 creation. Such, too, was Humboldt's idea. See my first note 
 on this play.
 
 40 PROMETHEUS. [739-764. 
 
 this mortal fair one, hath cast upon her these wanderings. 
 And a bitter wooer, maiden, hast thou found for thy hand ; 
 for think that the words which thou hast now heard are not 
 even for a prelude. 
 
 lo. Woe is me ! ah ! ah ! 
 
 PR. Thou too in thy turn 1 art crying out and moaning : 
 what wilt thou do then, when thou learnest the residue of 
 thy ills ? 
 
 CH. What ! hast thou aught of suffering left to tell to 
 her? 
 
 PR. Ay, a tempestuous sea of baleful calamities. 
 
 lo. What gain then is it for me to live ? but why did I 
 not quickly fling myself from this rough precipice, that dash- 
 ing on the plain I had rid myself of all my pangs ? for better 
 is it once to die, than all one's days to suffer ill. 
 
 PR. Verily thou wouldst hardly bear the agonies of me to 
 whom it is not doomed to die. For this would be an escape 
 from sufferings. But now there is no limit set to my hard- 
 ships, until Jove shall have been deposed from his tyranny. 
 
 lo. What ! is it possible that Jupiter should ever fall from 
 his power? 
 
 PR. Glad wouldst thou be, I ween, to witness this event. 
 
 lo. And how not so, I, who through Jupiter am suffering 
 ill? 
 
 PR. Well, then, thou mayest assure thyself of these things 
 that they are so. 
 
 lo. By whom is he to be despoiled of his sceptre of tyr- 
 anny. 
 
 PR. Himself, by his own senseless counsels. 
 
 Jo. In what manner? Specify it, if there be no harm. 
 
 PR. He will make such a match as he shall one day rue. 2 
 
 1 See Schutz and Griffiths. 
 
 2 Wrapped in mystery as the liberation of Prometheus is in
 
 76S-774-] PROMETHEUS. 41 
 
 lo. Celestial or mortal ? If it may be spoken, tell me. 
 
 PR. But why ask its nature ? for it is not a matter that I 
 can communicate to you. 
 
 lo. Is it by a consort that he is to be ejected from his 
 throne ? 
 
 PR. Yes, surely, one that shall give birth to a son mightier 
 than the father. 1 
 
 lo. And has he no refuge from this misfortune ? 
 
 PR. Not he, indeed, before at any rate I after being liber- 
 ated from my shackles 
 
 lo. Who, then, is he that shall liberate thee in despite of 
 Jupiter? 
 
 PR. It is ordained that it shall be one of thine own de- 
 scendants. 
 
 lo. How sayest thou ? Shall child of mine release thee 
 from thy ills ? 
 
 PR. Yes, the third of thy lineage in addition to ten other 
 generations. 2 
 
 this drama, it may be amusing to compare the following ex- 
 tracts from the Short Chronicle prefixed to Sir I. Newton's 
 Chronology. 
 
 "968. B.C. Sesak, having carried on his victories to Mount 
 Caucasus, leaves his nephew Prometheus there, to guard the 
 pass, etc. 
 
 "937. The Argonautic expedition. Prometheus leaves Mount 
 Caucasus, being set at liberty by Hercules," etc. Old Trans- 
 lator. 
 
 1 Stanley compares Pindar, Isth. vii. 33. 
 
 Treirpta/jiivov rjv Qep- 
 
 -rfpov y6vov [of] avaxra Trarp&S" TEKSIV. 
 
 And Apoll. Ehod. iv. 201. Also the words of Thetis herself in 
 Nonnus, Dionys. xxxiii. 356. 
 
 Zcv~ fie Trarrip <5i&)r icai ri0\ev er yafiov ?X<f(v, 
 el fifj fiiv iroOeovra yipwv dveKoirre Hpopr]0e65' ) 
 Oc(nri^<jiv KpoviuvoS" dpciova nalla tpvreiiaai. 
 
 2 "These were; 1. Epaphus; 2. Lybia; 3. Belus; 4. Danaus;
 
 42 PROMETHEUS. [775-797- 
 
 lo. This prophecy of thine is no longer easy for me to form 
 a guess upon. 
 
 PE. Nor seek thou to know over well thine own pangs. 
 
 lo. Do not, after proffering me a benefit, withhold it from 
 me. 
 
 PR. I will freely grant thee one of two disclosures. 
 
 lo. Explain to me first of what sort they are, and allow 
 me my choice. 
 
 PR. I allow it thee ; for choose whether I shall clearly tell 
 to thee the residue of thy troubles, or who it is that is to be 
 my deliverer. 
 
 CH. Of these twain do thou vouchsafe to bestow the one 
 boon on this damsel, and the other on me, and disdain thou 
 not my request. To her tell the rest of her wanderings, and 
 to me him that is to deliver thee ; for this I long [to hear]. 
 
 PK. Seeing that ye are eagerly bent upon it, I will not 
 oppose your wishes, so as not to utter every thing as much 
 as ye desire. To thee in the first place, lo, will I describe 
 thy mazy wanderings, which do thou engrave on the record- 
 ing tablets of thy mind. 
 
 When thou shalt have crossed the stream that is the 
 boundary of the Continents, to the ruddy realms of morn 
 
 where walks the sun 1 having passed 
 
 over the roaring swell of the sea, until thou shalt reach the 
 Gorgonian plains of Cisthene, where dwell the Phorcides, 
 three swan-like aged damsels, that possess one eye in com- 
 mon, that have but a single tooth, on whom ne'er doth the 
 sun glance with his rays, nor the nightly moon. And hard 
 
 5. Hypermnestra ; 6. Abas; 7. Prcetus; 8. Acrisius; 9. Danae; 
 10. Perseus; 11. Electryon; 12. Alcmena; 13. Hercules." 
 Blomfield. 
 
 1 For two ways of supplying the lacuna in this description 
 of lo'a travels, see Diudorf and Paley.
 
 798-826.] PROMETHEUS. 43 
 
 by are three winged sisters of these, the snake-tressed Gor- 
 gons, abhorred of mortals, whom none of human race can 
 look upon and retain the breath of life. 1 Such is this cau- 
 tion 2 which I mention to thee. Now lend an ear to another 
 hideous spectacle ; for be on thy guard against the keen- 
 fanged hounds of Jupiter that never bark, the gryphons, and 
 the cavalry host of one-eyed Arimaspians, who dwell on the 
 banks of the gold-gushing fount, the stream of Pluto : go not 
 thou nigh to these. And thou wilt reach a far-distant land, 
 a dark tribe, who dwell close upon the fountains of the sun, 
 where is the river jEthiops. Along the banks of this wend 
 thy way, until thou shalt have reached the cataract where 
 from the Bybline mountains the Nile pours forth his hal- 
 lowed, grateful stream. This will guide thee to the trian- 
 gular land of the Nile ; where at length, lo, it is ordained 
 for thee and thy children after thee to found the distant 
 colony. And if aught of this is obscurely uttered, and hard 
 to be understood, question me anew, and learn it thoroughly 
 and clearly : as for leisure, I have more than I desire. 
 
 CH. If indeed thou hast aught to tell of her baleful Avan- 
 derings, that still remains or hath been omitted, say on ; but 
 if thou hast told the whole, give to us in our turn the favor 
 which we ask, and you, perchance, remember. 
 
 PR. She hath heard the full term of her journeying. 
 And that she may know that she hath not been listening to 
 me in vain, I will relate what hardships she endured before 
 she came hither, giving her this as a sure proof of my state- 
 
 1 Being turned into stone. Such was the punishment of the 
 fire-worshipers in the story of the first Lady of Baghdad. See 
 Arabian Nights, Vol. I., p. 198. The mythico-geographical al- 
 lusions in the following lines have been so fully and so learn- 
 edly illustrated, that I shall content myself with referring to 
 the commentators. 
 
 2 See Linwood's Lexicon and Griffiths' note.
 
 44 PROMETHEUS. [827-852. 
 
 ments. The very great multitude indeed of words I shall 
 omit, and I will proceed to the termination itself of thine 
 aberrations. For after that thou hadst come to the Molos- 
 sian plains, and about the lofty ridge of Dodona, where is 
 the oracular seat of Thesprotian Jove, and a portent passing 
 belief, the speaking oaks, by which thou wast clearly and 
 without any ambiguity saluted illustrious spouse of Jove that 
 art to be; if aught of this hath any charms for thee. 1 Thence 
 madly rushing along the seaside track, thou didst dart away 
 to the vast bay of Rhea, from which thou art tempest-driven 
 in retrograde courses : and in time to come, know well that 
 the gulf of the deep shall be called lO-nian, a memorial of 
 thy passage to all mortals. These hast thou as tokens of my 
 intelligence, how that it perceives somewhat beyond what 
 appears. 
 
 The rest I shall tell both to you and to her in common, 
 after reaching the very identical track of my former narra- 
 tive. There is on the land's utmost verge a city Canopus, 
 hard by the Nile's very mouth and alluvial dike ; on this 
 spot Jupiter at length makes thee sane by merely soothing 
 and touching thee with his unalarming hand. And named 
 after the progeniture of Jupiter 2 thou shalt give birth to 
 swarthy Epaphus, who shall reap the harvest of all the land 
 which the wide-streaming Nile waters. But fifth in descent 
 
 1 There is still much doubt about the elision tows', tl. Others 
 read the passage interrogatively. See Griffiths and Dindorf. 
 
 2 This pun upon the name of Epaphus is preserved by Mos- 
 chus II. 50. 
 
 iv $' J\v ZttiJ", i-nafywptvoS' fipijta xeiatt Oetirj 
 7r<ipr(or 'Ivaxi'qS'. rfiv iirTair6pw irapa NfiXaj 
 ix |3<5or eiiKcpdoto irdXiv //crd//<|3 yvvalKa. 
 and Nonnus, III. p. 62, 20 : 
 
 tvd' *Fjira<pov 6il rixrev axrtpaaiwv ori xd\ir<a>> 
 'IvaXtr/s (Ja/jaAr/r iiraQfiaaro OsloS" dKOirtiS"
 
 853-874-] PROMETHEUS. 45 
 
 from him a generation of fifty virgins shall again come to 
 Argos, not of their own accord, fleeing from incestuous wed- 
 lock with their cousins ; and these with fluttering hearts, 
 like falcons left not far behind by doves, shall come pursuing 
 marriage such as should not be pursued, but heaven shall be 
 jealous over their persons ; l and Pelasgia shall receive them 
 after being crushed by a deed of night-fenced daring, wrought 
 by woman's hand ; for each bride shall bereave her respec- 
 tive husband of life, having dyed in their throats 2 a sword 
 of twin sharp edge. Would that in guise like this Venus 
 might visit my foes ! But tenderness shall soften one 3 of the 
 maidens, so that she shall not slay the partner of her 
 couch, but shall be blunt in her resolve ; and of the two al- 
 ternatives she shall choose the former, to be called a coward 
 rather than a murderess. She in Argos shall give birth to a 
 race of kings. There needs a long discourse to detail these 
 things distinctly ; but from this seed be sure shall spring a 
 dauntless warrior renowned in archery, who shall set me 
 free from these toils. Such predictions did my aged mother 
 
 1 There is much difficulty in tins passage. Dindorf under- 
 stands ixtiviav (/Egypt! filiorum), and so Paley, referring to his 
 notes on Ag. 938, Suppl. 437. Mr. Jelf, Gk. Gr., g 696, Obs. 3, ap- 
 pears to take the same view. There does not, therefore, seem 
 any need of alteration. On the other interpretation some- 
 times given to <pS6vov <i adipartov, see Linwood, v. QOAvos". 
 
 2 <r</>aya!<ri is rightly rendered "in jugulo" by Blomfield, 
 after Buhnk. Ep. Crit. I. p. 71. To the examples quoted add 
 Apul. Met. I. p. 108, "per jugulurn sinistrum capulotenus 
 pladium totum ei demergit," and p. 110, "jugulo ejus vulnus 
 dehiscit in patorem." The expression vvKrt/ppo -print Opdaei is 
 well illustrated by the words of Nounus, 1. c. p. 64, 17. 
 
 Kal Kpvipioir ^Kpiecrat aidripo'pdpiav iiri \tKTptav 
 apacva yv^ivdv aprja Kartvvaat OJjXiT ivv<*>. 
 
 3 See Nonnus I. c. Ovid, ep. xiv. 51, sqq. 
 
 "Sed timor, et pietas crudelibus obstitit ausis: 
 Castaque mandatum dextra refugit opus."
 
 46 PROMETHEUS. [875-902. 
 
 the Titaness Themis rehearse to me ; but how and when to 
 tell this requires a long detail, and thou in knowing it all 
 wouldst be in nought a gainer. 
 
 lo. Eleleu ! Eleleu ! Once more the spasm 1 and madden- 
 ing frenzies inflame me and the sting of the hornet, wrought 
 by no fire, 2 envenoms me ; and with panic my heart throbs 
 violently against my breast. My eyes, too, are rolling in a 
 mazy whirl, and lam carried out of my course by the raging 
 blast of madness, having no control of tongue, but my 
 troubled words dash idly against the surges of loathsome 
 calamity. 
 
 [Exit lo. 
 
 CH. Wise was the man, ay, wise indeed, who first weighed 
 well this maxim, and with his tongue published it abroad, 
 that to match in one's own degree is best by far ; 3 and that 
 one who lives by labor should woo the hand neither of any 
 that have waxed wanton in opulence, nor of such as pride 
 themselves on nobility of birth. Never, O Destines,* never 
 
 may ye behold me approaching as a 
 
 partner the couch of Jupiter : nor may I be 5 brought to the 
 arms of any bridegroom from among the sons of heaven : 
 for I am in dread when I behold the maiden lo, contented 
 with no mortal lover, greatly marred by wearisome wander- 
 ings at the hand of Juno. For myself, indeed inasmuch 
 as wedlock on one's own level is free from apprehension I 
 feel no alarm. 6 And oh I never may the love of the mightier 
 
 1 On <r0a<fAor see Eahnk. Tim. p. 123, and Blornfield. 
 
 2 See Paley. a is never intensive. 
 
 3 Ou this admonition, generally attributed to Pittacus, see 
 Griffiths, and for a modern illustration in the miseries of Sir 
 John Anvil (or Euville), Knt., the Spectator, No. 299. 
 
 * Paley would supply vdrviai to complete the metre. 
 
 5 I have followed Griffiths. 
 
 6 Dindorf would throw out apo^or, Paley Av USta, remarking 
 that the sense appears to require ore.
 
 903-929.] PROMETHEUS. 47 
 
 gods cast on me a glance that none can elude. This at least 
 is a war without a conflict, accomplishing things impossible : l 
 nor know I what might became of me, for I see not how I 
 could evade the counsel of Jove. 
 
 PR. Yet truly shall Jove, albeit he is self-willed in his 
 temper, be lowly, in such 2 wedlock is he prepared to wed, as 
 shall hurl him out of his sovereignty and off his throne a 
 forgotten thing ; and the curse of his father Saturn shall 
 then at length find entire consummation, which he impre- 
 cated when he was deposed from his ancient throne. From 
 disasters such as these there is no one of the gods besides 
 myself that can clearly disclose to him a way of escape. I 
 know this, and by what means. Wherefore let him rest on 
 in his presumption, putting confidence in his thunders aloft, 
 brandishing in his hand a fire-breathing bolt. For not one 
 jot shall these suffice to save him from falling dishonored in 
 a downfall beyond endurance ; such an antagonist is he now 
 with his own hands preparing against himself, a portent that 
 shall baffle all resistance ; who shall invent a flame more po- 
 tent than the lightning, and a mighty din that shall surpass 
 the thunder; and shall shiver the ocean trident, that earth- 
 convulsing pest, the spear of Neptune. And when he hath 
 stumbled upon this mischief, he shall be taught how great 
 is the difference between sovereignty and slavery. 
 
 CH. Thou forsooth art boding against Jupiter the things 
 thou wishest. 
 
 PR. Things that shall come to pass, and that I desire to 
 boot 
 
 1 I.e. possessing resources even among impossibilities. Cf. 
 Antig. 360. airopo? in oii&iv Zpxerai, and for the construction, 
 Jelf, Gk. Gr. ? 581, 2. obs. 
 
 2 I think Elmsley has settled the question in favor of roiov 
 for olov.
 
 48 PROMETHEUS. [930-955. 
 
 CH. And are we to expect that any one will get the mas- 
 tery of Jove ? 
 
 PR. Ay, and pangs too yet harder to bear than these [of 
 mine] shall he sustain. 
 
 CH. And how is it that thou art not dismayed blurting out 
 words such as these ? 
 
 PR. Why at what should I be terrified to whom it is not 
 destined to die ? 
 
 CH. Yet perchance he will provide for thee affliction more 
 grievous than even this. 
 
 PR. Let him do it then, all is foreseen by me. 
 
 CH. They that do homage to Adrasteia are wise. 
 
 PR. Do homage, make thy prayer, cringe to each ruler of 
 the day. I care for Jove less than nothing ; let him do, let 
 him lord it for this brief span, e'en as he list, for not long 
 shall he rule over the gods. But no more, for I descry 
 Jove's courier close at hand, the menial of the new monarch : 
 beyond all [doubt] he has come to announce to us some 
 
 news. 
 
 Enter MERCURY. 
 
 Thee, the contriver, thee full of gall and bitterness, who 
 sinned against the gods by bestowing their honors on crea- 
 tures of a day, the thief of fire, I address. The Sire com- 
 mands thee to divulge of what nuptials it is that thou art 
 vaunting, by means of which he is to be put down from his 
 power. And these things, moreover, without any kind of 
 mystery, but each exactly as it is, do thou tell out ; and en- 
 tail not upon me, Prometheus, a double journey ; and thou 
 perceivest that by such conduct Jove is not softened. 
 
 PR. High sounding, i' faith, and full of haughtiness is thy 
 speech, as beseems a lackey of the gods. Young in years, ye 
 are young in power j 1 and ye fancy forsooth that ye dwell in 
 
 1 " In JEschylus we seem to read the vehement language of
 
 956-977-] PROMETHEUS. 49 
 
 a citadel impregnable against sorrow. Have I not known 
 two monarchs 1 dethroned from it ? And the third that now 
 is ruler I shall also see expelled most foully and most quickly. 
 Seem I to thee in aught to be dismayed at, and to crouch 
 beneath the new gods ? Widely, ay altogether, do I come 
 short [of such feelings]. But do thou hie thee back the way 
 by which thou earnest : for not one tittle shalt thou learn of 
 the matter on which thou questionest me. 
 
 MER. Yet truly 'twas by such self-will even before now 
 that thou didst bring thyself to such a calamitous moor- 
 ing. 
 
 PR. Be well assured that I would not barter my wretched 
 plight for thy drudgery ; for better do I deem it to be a 
 lackey to this rock, than to be born the confidential courier 
 of father Jove. Thus is it meet to repay insult in kind. 
 
 MER. Thou seemest to revel in thy present state. 
 
 PR. Eevel ! Would that I might see my foes thus revel- 
 ing, and among these I reckon thee. 
 
 MER. What dost thou impute to me also any blame for thy 
 mischances ? 
 
 PR. In plain truth, I detest all the gods, as many of them 
 as, after having received benefits at my hands, are iniqui- 
 tously visiting me with evils. 
 
 MER. I hear thee raving with no slight disorder. 
 
 an old servant of exploded Titanism : with him Jupiter and the 
 Olympians are but a new dynasty, fresh and exulting, inso- 
 lent and capricious, the victory just gained and yet but imper- 
 fectly secured over the mysterious and venerable beings who 
 had preceded, TIME, HEAVEN, OCEAN, EAETH and her gi- 
 gantic progeny : Jupiter is still but half the monarch of the 
 world ; his future fall is not obscurely predicted, and even 
 while he reigns, a gloomy irresistible destiny controls his 
 power." Quart. Eev. xxviii, 416. 
 1 Uranus and Saturn. Cf. Agam. 167 sqq. 
 
 3
 
 50 PROMETHEUS. [978-1001. 
 
 PR. Disordered I would be, if disorder it be to loathe 
 one's foes. 
 
 MER. Thou wouldst be beyond endurance, wert thou in 
 prosperity. 
 
 PR. Woe's me ! 
 
 MER. This word of thine Jove knows not. 
 
 PR. Ay, but Time as he grows old teaches all things. 
 
 MER. And yet verily thou knowest not yet how to be dis- 
 creet. 
 
 PR. No i' faith, or I should not have held parley with thee, 
 menial as thou art. 
 
 MER. Thou seemest disposed to tell nought of the things 
 which the Sire desires. 
 
 PR. In sooth, being under obligation as I am to him, I am 
 bound to return his favor. 
 
 MER. Thou floutest me, forsooth, as if I were a boy. 
 
 PR. Why, art thou not a boy, and yet sillier than one, if 
 thou lookest to obtain any information from me ? There is 
 no outrage nor artifice by which Jupiter shall bring me to 
 utter this, before my torturing shackles shall have been loos- 
 ened. Wherefore let his glowing lightning be hurled, and 
 with the white feathered shower of snow, and thunderings 
 beneath the earth let him confound and embroil the 
 universe ; for nought of these things shall bend me so much 
 as even to say by whom it is doomed that he shall be put 
 down from his sovereignty. 
 
 MER. Consider now whether this determination seems 
 availing. 
 
 PR. Long since has this been considered and resolved. 
 
 MER. Kesolve, O vain one, resolve at length in considera- 
 tion of thy present sufferings to come to thy right senses. 
 
 PR. Thou troublest me with thine admonitions as vainly as
 
 1002-1026.] PROMETHEUS. 51 
 
 [thou mightest] a billow. 1 Never let it enter your thoughts 
 that I, affrighted by the purpose of Jupiter, shall become 
 womanish, and shall importune the object whom I greatly 
 loathe, with effeminate upliftings of my hands, to release 
 me from these shackles : I want much of that. 
 
 MER. With all that I have said I seem to be speaking to 
 no purpose ; for not one whit art thou melted or softened in 
 thy heart by entreaties, but art champing the bit like a colt 
 fresh yoked, and struggling against the reins. But on the 
 strength of an impotent scheme art thou thus violent ; for 
 obstinacy in one not soundly wise, itself by itself availeth less 
 than nothing. And mark, if thou art not persuaded by my 
 words, what a tempest and three-fold surge of ills, from 
 which there is no escape, will come upon thee. For in the 
 first place the Sire will shiver this craggy cleft with thunder 
 and the blaze of his bolt, and will overwhelm thy body, and 
 a clasping arm of rock shall bear thee up. And after thou 
 shalt have passed through to its close, a long space of time, 
 thou shalt come back into the light ; and a winged hound 
 of Jupiter, a blood-thirsting eagle, shall ravenously man- 
 gle thy huge lacerated frame, stealing upon thee an un- 
 bidden guest, and [tarrying] all the live-long day, and shall 
 banquet his fill on the black viands 2 of thy liver. To such 
 
 1 Milton, Samson Agon. 
 
 Dalilah. "I see thou art implacable, more deaf 
 
 To prayers than winds or seas." 
 Merchant of Venice, Act 4, sc. 1. 
 
 " You may as well go stand upon the beac^ 
 
 And bid the main flood hate his usual height." 
 See Schrader on Musseus, 320. 
 
 2 See Linwood's Lexicon. Cf. Nonnus, Dionys, II. p. 45, 22. 
 
 ietr/na tjtvyutv <!oX<5//7rir OfiapTfiatu T[po^ r )9Vg ) 
 fJTraror fyJoJoiror a^eiSca iairi'itovrja 
 
 v Spviv e\uv Tro/OT^a Kc\evdov.
 
 $2 PROMETHEUS. [1027-1064. 
 
 labors look thou for no termination, until some god shall 
 appear as a substitute in thy pangs, and shall be willing to 
 go both to gloomy Hades, and to the murky depths around 
 Tartarus. Wherefore advise thee, since this is no fictitious 
 vaunt, but uttered in great earnestness ; for the divine mouth 
 knows not how to utter falsehood, but will bring every word 
 to pass. But do thou look around and reflect, and never for 
 a moment deem pertinacity better than discretion. 
 
 CH. To us, indeed, Mercury seems to propose no unsea- 
 sonable counsel ; for he bids thee to abandon thy reckless- 
 ness, and seek out wise consideration. Be persuaded ; for 
 to a wise man 'tis disgraceful to err. 
 
 PR. To me already well aware of it hath this fellow urged 
 his message ; but for a foe to suffer horribly at the hands of 
 foes is no indignity. Wherefore let the doubly-pointed 
 wreath of his fire be hurled at me, and ether be torn piece- 
 meal by thunder, and spasm of savage blasts ; and let the 
 wind rock earth from her base, roots and all, and with 
 stormy surge mingle in rough tide the billow of the deep 
 and the paths of the stars ; and fling my body into black 
 Tartarus, with a whirl, in the stern eddies of necessity. Yet 
 by no possible means shall he visit me with death. 
 
 MER. Resolutions and expressions, in truth, such as these 
 of thine, one may hear from maniacs. For in what point 
 doth his fate fall short of insanity 7 1 What doth it abate 
 from ravings ? But do ye then at any rate, that sympathize 
 with him in his sufferings, withdraw hence speedily some- 
 whither from this spot, lest the harsh bellowing of the 
 thunder smite you with idiotcy. 
 
 CH. Utter and advise me to something else, in which 
 too thou mayest prevail upon me ; for in this, be sure, thou 
 
 1 I have adopted Dindorf s emendation. See his note.
 
 1065-1093.] PROMETHEUS. 53 
 
 hast intruded a proposal not to be borne. How is it that 
 thou urgest me to practice baseness ? Along with him here 
 , I am willing to endure what is destined, for I have learned 
 to abhor traitors ; and there is no evil which I hold in 
 greater abomination. 
 
 MER. Well, then, bear in mind the things of which I 
 forewarn you : and do not, when ye have been caught in 
 the snares of At, throw the blame on fortune, nor ever at 
 any time say that Jove cast you into unforeseen calamity : 
 no indeed, but ye your ownselves : for well aware, and not 
 on a sudden, nor in ignorance, will ye be entangled by 
 your senselessness in an impervious net of At. 
 
 [Exit MERCURY. 
 
 PR. And verily in deed and no longer in word doth the 
 earth heave, and the roaring echo of thunder rolls bellow- 
 ing by us ; and deep blazing wreaths of lightning are glaring, 
 and hurricanes whirl the dust ; and blasts of all the winds 
 are leaping forth, showing one against the other a strife of 
 conflict gusts ; and the firmament is embroiled with the deep. 1 
 Such is this onslaught that is clearly coming upon me from 
 Jove, a cause for terror. O dread majesty of my mother 
 Earth, O ether that diffusest thy common light, thou be- 
 holdest the wrongs I suffer. 
 
 1 How the cosmoramic effects here described were repre- 
 sented on the stage, it is difficult to say, but such descriptions 
 are by no means rare in the poets. Compare Musseus, 314, sqq. 
 Lucan, I. 75 sqq. and a multitude in the notes of La Cerda on 
 Virgil, jEn. I. 107, and Barthius on Claudian. Gigant. 31, sqq. 
 Nonnus, Diouys. I. p. 12.
 
 ^"V ^ 
 
 Wallace High SGhool< 
 
 No, 
 
 THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES. 
 
 THE siege of the city of Thebes, and the description of the 
 seven champions of the Theban and Argive armies, The 
 deaths of the brothers Polynices and Eteocles, the mourn- 
 ings over them, by their sisters Antigone and Ismeue, and 
 the public refusal of burial to the ashes of Polynices, against 
 which Antigone boldly protests, conclude the play. 
 
 PERSONS EEPEESENTED. 
 
 ETEOCLES. 
 
 A MESSENGER. 
 
 CHOBUS OF THEBAN VIRGINS. 
 
 ISMENE. 
 ANTIGONE. 
 A HERALD. 
 
 SCENE. The Acropolis of Thebes. Compare v. 227, ed. Blomf. 
 
 TIME. Early in the morning; the length of the action can 
 scarcely be fixed with absolute certainty. It certainly did not 
 exceed twelve hours. 
 
 The expedition of " the Seven " against Thebes is fixed by 
 Sir I. Newton, B.C. 928. Cf. of his Chronology, p. 27. Blai'r 
 carries it as far back as B.C. 1225. OLD TRANSLATOR. 
 
 ETEOCLES. Citizens of Cadmus ! it is fitting that he should 
 speak things seasonable who has the care of affairs on the 
 poop of a state, managing the helm, not lulling his eyelids 
 in slumber. For if we succeed, the gods are the cause ; but 
 if, on the other hand (which heaven forbid), mischance 
 should befall, Eteocles alone would be much bruited through 
 the city by the townsmen in strains clamorous and in wail- 
 ings, of which may Jove prove rightly called the Averter to 
 (54)
 
 IO-34-] THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES. 55 
 
 the city of the Cadmaeans. l And now it behooves you both 
 him who still falls short of youth in its prime, and him who in 
 point of age has passed his youth, nurturing the ample vigor 
 of his frame and each that is in his prime, 2 as is best fitting 
 to succor the city, and the altars of your country's gods, so 
 that their honors may never be obliterated ; your children 
 too, and your motherland, most beloved nurse ; for she, tak- 
 ing fully on herself the whole trouble of your rearing, nurtured 
 you when infants crawling on her .kindly soil, for her trusty 
 shield-bearing citizens, that ye might be [trusty 3 ] for this 
 service. And, for the present indeed, up to this day, the 
 deity inclines in our favor ; since to us now all this time be- 
 leaguered the war for the most part, by divine allotment, 
 turns out well. But now, as saith the seer, the feeder* of 
 birds, revolving in ear and thoughts,, without the use of fire, 
 the oracular birds with unerring art he, lord of such divin- 
 ing powers, declares that the main Achaean assault is this 
 night proclaimed, 5 and [that the Achaeans] attempt the city. 
 But haste ye all, both to the battlements and the gates of 
 the tower works ; On ! in full panoply throng the breast- 
 works, and take your stations on the platforms of the' towers,, 
 and, making stand at the outlets of the gates, be of good 
 
 1 Or, "of which may Jove the Averter be what his name 
 imports." See Paley and Linwood's Lex. 
 
 2 This interpretation is now fully established, See Paley. 
 Thus Cffisar, B. G. I. 29, "qui arma ferre possent : et item sepa- 
 ratius pueri, senes;" II. 28, Eteocles wishes even the axpdot to 
 assist iu the common defense. 
 
 3 Trio-! is to be supplied with yivotc-Oc. 
 
 4 Although portip may be compared with the Eoman pullarius, 
 yet the phrase is here probably only equivalent to (Snr<5rjr 
 pavTfnpdTiav soon after. 
 
 5 Paley prefers " nocturno concilio agitari," comparing Ehes. 
 
 88, ra; <rar TrpdS" tuvar 0vAar tXflcii/rtr <t>6$u> WKTriyopovai. On the 
 
 authority of Griffiths, I have supplied rovr 'Axaiovr before
 
 56 THE SEVEN [3S~59. 
 
 heart, nor be over-dismayed at the rabble of the aliens ; God 
 will give a happy issue. Moreover, I have also dispatched 
 scouts and observers of the army, who will not, I feel assured, 
 loiter on their way ; and when I have had intelligence from 
 these, I shall, in no point, he surprised by stratagem. 
 
 MESSENGER. Most gallant Eteocles ! sovereign of the 
 Cadmaaans, I have come bearing a clear account of the mat- 
 ters yonder, from the army ; and I myself am eye-witness of 
 the facts. For seven chieftains, impetuous leaders of bat- 
 talions, cutting a bull's throat, 1 over an iron-rimmed shield, 2 
 and touching with their hands the gore of the bull, by oath 
 have called to witness 3 Mars, Enyo, and Terror, that delights 
 in bloodshed, that either having wrought the demolition 
 of our city they will make havoc of the town of the Cad- 
 maeans, or having fallen will steep this land of ours in gore. 
 Memorials too of themselves, to their parents at home, were 
 they with their hands hanging in festoons* at the car of Adras- 
 tus, dropping a tear, but no sound of complaint passed their 
 lips. 5 For their iron-hearted spirit glowing with valor was 
 panting, as of lions that glare battle. And the report of 
 these my tidings is not retarded by sluggishness. But I left 
 them in the very act of casting lots, that so each of them, 
 obtaining his post by lot, might lead on his battalion to our 
 gates. Wherefore do thou with all speed marshal at the 
 outlets of the gates the bravest men, the chosen of our city ; 
 for already the host of Argives hard at hand armed cap-a-pie 
 
 1 See my note on Prom. 863. 2 See commentators. 
 
 3 Cf. Jelf. Gk. Gr. 566, 2. 
 
 * See Linwood, s. v. art<j>tiv. Paley compares v. 267, A.a$vpa 
 Sduv iovpiirtjxd' dyvotS" SdpoiS" 2r!//w irpd vatav. AdrastUS alone had 
 
 been promised a safe return home. 
 
 6 Cf. Earn. 515, O'IKTOV oiVritratro, would utter cries of pity. Suppl. 
 59, olxTov oiKTpiv attav, hearing one mournful piteous cry. The old 
 translations rendered it, " no regret was expressed on their 
 countenance."
 
 60-77-] AGAINST THEBES. 57 
 
 is in motion, is speeding onward, and white foam is staining 
 the plain with its drippings from the lungs of their chargers. 
 Do thou then, like the clever helmsman of a vessel, fence 1 
 our city before the breath of Mars burst like a hurricane 
 upon it, for the main-land billow of their host is roaring. 
 And for these measures do thou seize the very earliest oppor- 
 tunity ; for the sequel I will keep my eye a faithful watch 
 by day, and thou, knowing from the clearness of my detail 
 the movements of those without, shalt be unscathed. 
 
 [Exit MESSENGER. 
 
 ET. O Jupiter ! and earth ! and ye tutelary deities ! and 
 thou Curse, the mighty Erinnys of my sire ! do not, I pray, 
 uproot with utter destruction from its very base, a prey to 
 foemen, our city, which utters the language of Greece, and 
 our native dwellings. 2 Grant that they may never hold the 
 free land and city of Cadmus in a yoke of slavery ; but be ye 
 our strength nay, I trust that I am urging our common in- 
 terests, for a state that is in prosperity honors the divinities. 3 
 
 [Exit ETEOCLES. 
 
 1 Perhaps we might render <t>pa{at, dam, in order to keep up 
 the metaphor of the ship. Cf. Horn. Od. V. 346, <ppd{e 6s piv 
 fiiireovi 6iapTrepir o'urvivijtrt. The closing the ports of a vessel to 
 keep out the water will best convey the meaning to modern 
 readers. 
 
 2 This seems the true meaning of i<pe<rrtovs; indigenous in 
 Greece, as Blomfield interprets, quoting Hesych, itpiario?, aM- 
 \6wv, i>oi<cor, II. B. 125, etc. An Athenian audience, with their 
 political jealousy of Asiatic influence, and pride of indigenous 
 origin, would have appreciated this prayer as heartilyas the 
 one below, V. 158, v6\tv Soflmm n^ Trpo6w9' ''Erepoduivia orpar(j>, 
 which their minds would connect with more powerful associa- 
 tions than the mere provincial differences of Bceotiaand Argos. 
 How great a stress was laid upon the ridicule of foreign dia- 
 lect, may be seen from the reception of Pseudartabas in the 
 Acharnians. 
 
 3 Cf. Arist. Ehet. II. 17, 6. The same sentiment, though ex- 
 pressed the contrary way, occurs in Eur. Troad. 26, 'Epripia yap 
 iri\iv Srav Xd/Sj Kaxfi, TSoacl rd ruv flccoi/ oii&i ri/jao-ai OtAti. 
 
 3*
 
 58 THE SEVEN [78-98. 
 
 CHORUS. 1 I wail over our fearful, mighty woes ! the army 
 is let loose, having quitted its camp, a mighty mounted host 
 is streaming hitherward in advance 3 the dust appearing high 
 in the air convinces me, a voiceless, clear, true messenger ; 
 the noise of the clatter of their hoofs upon the plain, 3 reach- 
 ing even to our couches, approaches my ears, is wafted on, 
 and is rumbling like a resistless torrent lashing the moun- 
 tain-side. Alas ! alas ! oh gods and goddesses, avert the ris- 
 ing horror ; the white-bucklered 4 well-appointed host is rush- 
 ing on with a shout on the other side our walls, speeding its 
 way to the city. Who then will rescue us, who then of gods 
 and goddesses will aid us ? Shall I then prostrate myself 
 before the statues of the divinities? Oh ye blessed beings, 
 seated on your glorious thrones, 'tis high time for us to cling, 
 to your statues why do we deeply sighing delay? Hear 
 ye, or hear ye not, the clash of bucklers ? When, if not now, 
 
 1 The chorus survey the surrounding plains from a high part 
 of the Acropolis of Thebes, as Antigone from the top of the 
 palace in the Phcenissa? of Euripides, v. 103, sqq. 
 
 2 jrp&6pop.os-=so as to be foremost. Cf. Soph. Antig. 108,0uyu<5a xp6- 
 dpoftov (if urtpfo Kivfiaaaa xaAmJ. 
 
 3 This passage is undoubtedly corrupt, but Dindorf s conjec- 
 ture cA ft t/iir 0puar &ios" 8ir\b>v KrvTroTiroTiXftifiirTtTat^ <5ia iri&ov fioot 
 Trorarai, ftpa^ct 6' , although ingenious, differs too much from 
 the ductus literarum, to be considered safe. Paley from the in- 
 terpretation of the Medicean MS. and the reading of Eobortelli, 
 tAIAc/^var, has conjectured AIA <3t yar /ias~ irc&C AirkoiirvTrov, which 
 seems preferable. Perhaps we might read rt ft yds- iredwrr\oKruTTOi) 
 ucrlv XPI//T. /Soa, by tmesis, for ivixpi^rcTai. ^Eschylus used the 
 compound, yxpin-Twflm, Suppl. 790, and nothing is more common 
 than such a tmesis. I doubt whether vdiov\oKTVirov is not one 
 of ^Eschylus' own " high-crested " compounds. Mr. Burges has 
 kindly suggested a parallel passage of an anonymous author, 
 quoted bySuidas, S. V. 7raparro^i/i;r : 'iinrwv XpcneTi{,dVTUV t rflS' y>}r 
 TflTr TToa-lv dvTotv waparro^Ey^r, ov\div auyKpouo/uu&H', 
 
 * Cf. Soph. Antig. 106.
 
 99-H2.] AGAINST THEBES. 59 
 
 shall we set about the orison of the peplus 1 and chaplets ? I 
 perceive a din, a crash of no single spear. What wilt thou 
 do? wilt thou, O Mars, ancient guardian of our soil, aban- 
 don thine own land ? God of the golden helm, look upon, 
 loot upon the city which once thou didst hold well-beloved. 
 Tutelary gods of our country, behold, 2 behold this train of 
 virgins suppliant to escape from slavery, 3 for around our 
 city a surge of men with waving crests is rippling, stirred 
 by the blasts of Mars. But, O Jove, sire all-perfect ! avert 
 thoroughly from us capture by the foemen ; for Argives are 
 encircling the fortress of Cadmus ; and I feel a dread of mar- 
 tial arms, and the bits which are fastened through the jaws 
 of their horses are knelling slaughter. And seven leaders 
 of the host, conspicuous in their spear-proof harness, are tak- 
 ing their stand at our seventh gate, 4 assigned their posts by 
 lot. Do thou too, O Jove-born power that delightest in bat- 
 tle, Pallas, become a savior to our city ; and thou, equestrian 
 monarch, sovereign of the main, with thy fish -smiting tri- 
 dent, O Neptune, grant a deliverance, a deliverance from our 
 terrors. Do thou too, O Mars, alas ! alas ! guard the city 
 which is named after Cadmus, and manifestly show thy care 
 
 1 Cf. Virg. jEn. I. 479; 
 
 " Interea ad templnm non sequse Palladia ibant 
 Crinibus Iliades passis, peplumque ferebant 
 Suppliciter tristes " 
 Statius, Theb. x. 50 : 
 
 " et ad patrias fusse Pelopeides aras 
 
 Sceptriferse Junonis opem, reditumque suorum 
 Exposcunt, pictasque fores, et frigida vultu 
 Saxa terunt, parvosque decent procumbere natos 
 
 ' * * * * * * 
 
 Peplum etiam dono, cujus mirabile textnm," etc. 
 
 2 Here there is a gap in the metre. See Dindorf. 
 
 3 "pro vitanda servitute." Paley. 
 
 * Not " at the seven gates," as Valckenaer has clearly shown.
 
 60 THE SEVEN [143-172. 
 
 and thou, Venus, the original mother of our race, avert [these 
 ills] for from thy blood are we sprung ; calling on thee with 
 heavenward orisons do we approach thee. And thou, Ly- 
 csean king, be thou fierce as a wolf 1 to the hostile army, 
 [moved] by the voice of our sighs. 2 Thou too, virgin- 
 daughter of Latona, deftly adorn thyself with thy bow, O 
 beloved Diana. Ah ! ah ! ah ! I hear the rumbling of cars 
 around the city, O revered. Juno, the naves of the heavy- 
 laden axles creak, the air is maddened with the whizzing 
 of javelins what is our city undergoing? What will be- 
 come of it? To what point is the deity conducting the 
 issue ? s ah ! ah ! A shower of stones too from their slingers 
 is coming over our battlements. O beloved Apollo ! there 
 is the clash of brass-rimmed shields at the gates, and the 
 just issue in battle must be decided by arms according to 
 the disposal of Jove. 4 And thou Onca, 5 immortal queen, 
 that dwellest in front of our city, rescue thy seven-gated seat. 
 O gods, all-potent to save, O ye gods and goddesses, perfect 
 guardians of the towers of this land, abandon not our war- 
 wasted city to an army of aliens. Listen to these virgins, 
 listen to our all-just prayers, as is most right, to the orisons 
 of virgins which are offered with out-stretched hands. O 
 
 1 The paronomasia can only be kept up by rendering, "do 
 thou, king of wolves, fall with wolf-like fierceness," etc. Miil- 
 ler, Dorians, vol. i. p. 325, considers that Au/cnor is connected 
 with AtJ<% light, not with Au*or, a wolf. 
 
 2 I follow Paley's emendation, dtfraij. 
 
 3 See a judicious note of Paley's. 
 
 4 I have borrowed Griffiths' translation. It seems impossible 
 that a-yvdv Xof could ever be a personal appeal, while <ri> rt 
 evidently shows that the address to Pallas Onca was uncon- 
 nected with the preceding line. As there is probably a lacuna 
 after AiMsv, it is impossible to arrive at any certain meaning. 
 
 5 See Stanley. 'Oy*a is a Phoanician word, and epithet of 
 Minerva.
 
 173-206.] AGAINST THEBES. 61 
 
 beloved divinities, hovering around our city as its deliverers, 
 show how ye love it ; give heed to our public rituals, and 
 when ye give heed to them succor us, and be ye truly mind- 
 ful, I beseech ye, of the rites of our city which abound in 
 sacrifices. 
 
 Re-enter ETEOCLES. 
 
 Intolerable creatures ! is this, I ask you, best and salutary 
 for our city, and an encouragement to this beleagured force, 
 for you to fall before the statues of our tutelary gods, to 
 shriek, to yell O ye abominations of the wise. Neither in 
 woes nor in welcome prosperity may I be associated with 
 womankind ; for when woman prevails, her audacity is more 
 than one can live with ; and when she is affrighted, she is a 
 still greater mischief to her home and city. Even now, having 
 brought upon your countrymen this pell-mell flight, ye have, 
 by your outcries, spread dastard cowardice, and ye are serv- 
 ing, as best ye may, the interests of those without, but we 
 within our walls are suffering capture at our own hands ; 
 such blessings will you have if you live along with women. 
 "Wherefore if any one give not ear to my authority, be it 
 man or woman, or other between [these names 1 ], the fatal 
 pebble shall decide against him, and by no means shall he 
 escape the doom of stoning at the hand of the populace. 
 For what passeth without is a man's concern, let not woman 
 offer advice but remaining within do thou occasion no mis- 
 chief. Heard' st thou, or heard' st thou not, or am I speaking 
 to a deaf woman ? 
 
 CH. O dear son of CEdipus, I felt terror when I heard the 
 din from the clatter of the cars, when the wheel-whirling 
 naves rattled, and [the din] of the fire-wrought bits, the 
 
 1 The boys, girls, etc.
 
 62 THE SEVEN [207-230. 
 
 rudders 1 of the horses, passing through their mouths that 
 know no rest. 
 
 ET. What then ? does the mariner who flees from the stern 
 to the prow 2 find means of escape, when his bark is laboring 
 against the billow of the ocean ? 
 
 CH. No ; but I came in haste to the ancient statues of the 
 divinities, trusting in the gods, when there was a pattering 
 at our gates of destructive sleet showering down, even then 
 I was carried away by terror to offer my supplications to the 
 Immortals, that they would extend their protection over 
 the city. 
 
 ET. Pray that our fortification may resist the hostile 
 spear. 
 
 CH. Shall not this, then, be at the disposal of the gods? 
 
 ET. Ay, but 'tis said that the gods of the captured city 
 abandon it. 
 
 CH. At no time during my life may this conclave of gods 
 abandon us : never may I behold our city overrun, and an 
 army firing it with hostile flame. 
 
 ET. Do not thou, invoking the gods, take ill counsel ; for 
 subordination, woman, is the mother of saving success ; so 
 the adage runs. 
 
 CH. But the gods have a power superior still, and oft in 
 adversity does this raise the helpless out of severe calamity, 
 when clouds are overhanging his brow. 
 
 ET. It is the business of men, to present victims and offer- 
 
 1 Cf. Eur. Hippol. 1219, sqq. 
 
 Kai iccwirris ftiv 'unrlieots iv fiOttrt 
 iroAtir ^vvoixouiv ilpiratr, jjviar xepatv, 
 tX/f( Si KiJJvriv Start vavfla.rr)T hvf)p, 
 
 2 I.e. to adore the images placed at the head of the vessel. 
 See Griffiths.
 
 231-256.] AGAINST THEBES. 63 
 
 ings of worship to the gods, when foenieu are making an 
 attempt : 'tis thine on the other hand to hold thy peace and 
 abide within doors. 
 
 CH. 'Tis by the blessing of the gods that we inhabit a 
 city unconquered, and that our fortification is proof against 
 the multitude of our enemies. What Nemesis can feel 
 offended at this ? 
 
 ET. I am not offended that ye should honor the race of 
 the gods ; but that thou mayest not render the citizens faint- 
 hearted, keep quiet and yield not to excessive terrors. 
 
 CH. When I heard the sudden din, I came, on the very 
 instant, in distracting panic to this Acropolis, a hallowed 
 seat. 
 
 ET. Do not now, if ye hear of the dying or the wounded, 
 eagerly receive them with shrieks ; for with this slaughter of 
 mortals is Mars fed. 
 
 CH. And I do in truth hear the snortings of the horses. 
 
 ET. Do not now, when thou hearest them, hear too 
 distinctly. 
 
 CH. Our city groans from the ground, as though the foes 
 were hemming her in. 
 
 ET. Is it not then enough that I take measures for this ? 
 
 CH. I fear ! for the battering at the gates increases. 
 
 ET. Wilt thou not be silent? Say nought of this kind in 
 the city. 
 
 CH. O associate band [of gods], abandon not our towers. 
 
 ET. Can not ye endure it in silence, and confusion to 
 ye? 
 
 CH. Gods of my city ! let me not meet with slavery. 
 
 Ex. Thou thyself art making a slave both of me, of thy- 
 self, and of the city. 
 
 CH. O all-potent Jove ! turn the shaft against our foes. 
 
 Er. Jove ! what a race hast thou made women !
 
 64 THE SEVEN [257-283. 
 
 CH. Just as wretched as men when their city is taken. 
 
 Ex. Again thou art yelping as thou claspest the statues ! 
 
 CH. Yes, for in my panic terror hurries away my tongue. 
 
 ET. Would to heaven that you would grant me a trifling 
 favor on my requesting it. 
 
 CH. Tell me as quickly as you can, and I shall know at 
 once. 
 
 ET. Hold thy peace, wretched woman, alarm not thy 
 friends. 
 
 CH. I hold my peace with others I will suffer what is 
 destined. 
 
 ET. I prefer this expression of thine rather than thy 
 former words ; and moreover, coming forth from the statues, 
 pray thou for the best that the gods may be our allies. 
 And after thou hast listened to my prayers, then do thou 
 raise the sacred auspicious shout of the Psean, the Grecian 
 rite of sacrificial acclamation, an encouragement to thy 
 friends that removes the fear of the foe. And I, to the 
 tutelary gods of our land, both those who haunt the plains, 
 and those who watch over the forum, and to the fountains of 
 Dirce, and I speak not without those of the Ismenus, 1 if 
 things turn out well and our city is preserved, do thus make 
 my vows that we, dyeing the altars of the gods with the 
 blood of sheep, offering bulls to the gods, will deposit tro- 
 phies, and vestments of our enemies, spear-won spoils of the 
 foe, in their hallowed abodes. Offer thou prayers like these 
 to the gods, not with a number of sighs, nor with foolish and 
 wild sobbings ; for not one whit the more wilt thou escape 
 
 1 This far-fetched interpretation of an absurd text is rightly 
 condemned by W. Dindorf in his note, who elegantly reads 
 with Lud. Dindorf v&aoi r 'lannvov. Paley has clearly shown 
 the origin of the corruption. Linwood is equally disinclined 
 to support the common reading.
 
 284-317-] AGAINST THEBES. 65 
 
 Destiny. But I too, forsooth, 1 will go and marshal at the 
 seven outlets of our walls, six men, with myself for a seventh, 
 antagonists to our foes in gallant plight, before both urgent 
 messengers and quickly-bruited tidings arrive, and inflame 
 us by the crisis. [Exit ETEOCLES. 
 
 CH. I attend, but through terror my heart sleeps not, and 
 cares that press close upon my heart keep my dread alive, 
 because of the host that hems our walls 2 around ; like as 
 a dove, an all-attentive nurse, fears, on behalf of her brood, 
 serpents evil intruders into her nest. For some are advanc- 
 ing against the towers in all their numbers, in all their 
 array ; (what will become of me ?) and others are launching 
 the vast rugged stone at the citizens, who are assailed on all 
 sides. By every means, O ye Jove-descended gods ! rescue 
 the city and the army that spring from Cadmus. What better 
 plain of land will ye take in exchange to yourselves than 
 this, after ye have abandoned to our enemies the fertile land, 
 and Dirce's water best fed of all the streams that earth- 
 encircling Neptune sends forth, and the daughters of Te- 
 thys ? Wherefore, O tutelary gods of the city ! having 
 hurled on those without the towers the calamity that 
 slaughters men, and casts away shields, achieve glory for 
 these citizens, and be your statues placed on noble sites, as 
 deliverers of our city, 3 through our entreaties fraught with 
 
 1 Blomfield reads lyu Si y' Mpa?, the change of AEr to AEI1 
 being by no means a difficult one. Linwood agrees with this 
 alteration, and Dindorf in his notes. But Paley still defends 
 the common reading, thinking that i* ix9poTr is to be taken 
 from the following line. I do not think the poet would have 
 hazarded a construction so doubtful, that we might take M 
 either with avfpar, exOpois; or by tmesis, with afco. 
 
 3 The construction of the exegetical accusative is well illus- 
 trated in Jelf s Gk. Gr. ? 580, 3. 
 
 s I have followed Blomfield, and Dindorf in his notes, in 
 reading *Jor roiofa wXirair.
 
 66 THE SEVEN [318-352. 
 
 shrill groanings. For sad it is to send prematurely to de- 
 struction an ancient city, a prey of slavery to the spear, in- 
 gloriously overthrown in crumbling ashes by an Achaean 
 according to the will of heaven ; and for its women to be 
 dragged away captives, alas ! alas ! both the young and the 
 aged, like horses by their hair, while their vestments are 
 rent about their persons. And the emptied city cries aloud, 
 while its booty is wasted amid confused clamors ; verily I 
 fearfully forbode heavy calamities. And a mournful tiling 
 it is for [maidens] just marriageable, 1 before the celebration 
 of rites for culling the fresh flower of their virginity, to 
 have to traverse a hateful journey from their homes. What? 
 I pronounce that the dead fares better than these ; for full 
 mauy are the calamities, alas ! alas ! which a city undergoes 
 when it has been reduced. One drags another, 2 slaughters, 
 and to parts he sets fire the whole city is denied with 
 smoke, and raving Mars that tramples down the nations, 
 violating piety, inspires them. Throughout the town are 
 uproars, against the city rises the turreted circumvallation, 3 
 and man is slain by man with the spear. And the cries of 
 children at the breast all bloody resound, and there is rapine 
 sister of pell-mell confusion. Pillager meets pillager, and 
 the empty-handed shouts to the empty-handed, wishing to 
 have a partner, greedy for a portion that shall be neither less 
 nor equal. What of these things can speech picture ? Fruits 
 of every possible kind strewn 4 upon the ground occasion 
 
 1 This is perhaps the sense required ; but, with Dindorf, I 
 can not see how it can be elicited from the common reading. 
 Perhaps Schneider's apnrp<50oir is right, which is approved by 
 Dindorf, Linwood, and Paley. 
 
 2 There is the same irregular antithesis between a\\ov ayet 
 and ra 6e (=ra ie) Trvp<j>opeT; as in Soph. Ant. 138, ?* i' HXXa ra 
 fniv, n\\a 6 ITT' aAXoiT iirEviafta "Ap^T. 
 
 3 See Elmsl. on Eur. Bacch. 611. I follow Griffiths and Paley. 
 * There is much difficulty in the double participle vfcuv-
 
 353-382.] AGAINST THEBES. 67 
 
 sorrow, and dismal is the face of the stewards. And full 
 many a gift of earth is swept along in the worthless streams, in 
 undistinguished medley. And young female slaves have new 
 sorrows, a foe being superior 1 and fortunate as to their 
 wretched captive couch, so that they hope for life's gloomy 
 close to come, a guardian against their all-mournful sorrows. 
 
 SEMI-CH. The scout, methinks, my friends, is bringing us 
 some fres.h tidings from the army, urging in haste the for- 
 warding axles 2 of his feet. 
 
 SEMI-CH. Ay, and in very truth, here comes our prince, 
 son of CEdipus, very opportunely for learning the messen- 
 ger's report and haste does not allow him to make equal 
 footsteps. 3 
 
 [Re-enter MESSENGER and ETEOCLES/TOTH different sides. 
 
 MES. I Avould fain tell, for I know them well, the arrange- 
 ments of our adversaries, and how each has obtained his lot 
 at our gate. Tydeus now for some time has been raging hard 
 by the gates of Prcetus ; but the seer allows him not to cross 
 the stream of Ismenus, for the sacrifices are not auspicious. 
 So Tydeus, raving and greedy for the fight, roars like a ser- 
 pent in its hissings beneatli the noontide heat, and he smites 
 the sage seer, son of Oi'cleua, with a taunt, [saying] that he 
 
 /o'prjo-ar. Dindorf would altogether omit vpifrar, as a gloss. 
 But surely irtouv was more likely to be added as a gloss, than 
 Kvpno-as-. I think that the fault probably lies in veauv. 
 
 1 This passage is scarcely satisfactory, but I have followed 
 Paley. Perhaps if we place a comma after imeprepo-', and treat 
 &>r d6p. i. VTT. tiirvx. as a genitive absolute, there will be less ab- 
 ruptness, rXn-i'r tan standing for ikwi&vct, hy a frequent enallage. 
 
 2 The turgidity of this metaphor is almost too much even 
 for ^Eschylus! 
 
 3 The multitude of interpretations of the common reading 
 are from their uniform absurdity sufficient to show that it is 
 corrupt. I have chosen the least offensive, but am still certain 
 that awapr'^ei is indefensible. Hermann (who, strange to say, 
 is followed by Wellauer) reads Karapyi^ei, Blomfield *arapris.
 
 68 THE SEVEN [383-404, 
 
 is crouching to both Death and Battle out of cowardice. 
 Shouting out such words as these, he shakes there shadowy 
 crests, the hairy honors of his helm, while beneath his 
 buckler bells cast in brass are shrilly pealing terror : on 
 his buckler too he has this arrogant device a gleaming sky 
 tricked out with stars, and in the centre of the shield a 
 brilliant full moon is conspicuous, most august of the 
 heavenly bodies, the eye of night. Chafing thus in his 
 vaunting harness, he roars beside the bank of the river, 
 enamored of conflict, like a steed champing his bit with 
 rage, that rushes forth when he hears the voice of the trum- 
 pet. 1 Whom wilt thou marshal against this [foe] ? Who, 
 when the fastenings give way, is fit to be intrusted with the 
 defense of the gate of Proetus ? 
 
 ET. At no possible array of a man should I tremble ; and 
 blazonry has no power of inflicting wounds, and crests and 
 bell bite not 2 without the spear. And for this night which 
 thou tellest me is sparkling on his buckler with the stars of 
 heaven, it may perchance be a prophet in conceit ; s for if 
 night shall settle on his eyes as he is dying, verily this 
 vaunting device would correctly and justly answer to its 
 name, and he himself will have the insolence ominous 
 
 1 Besides Stanley's illustrations, see Pricseus on Apul. Apol. 
 p. 58. Pelagonius in the Geoponica, XVI. 2, observes uyaflou Si 
 ImroS jrat TOVTO reKpriptov, Orav <7r;*a>r n't dvcXirat, aXXa Kporuiv rhv 
 yfiv &<nrcp rpexetv M-iflti/jJ). St. Macarius Horn. XXIII. 2, lnav Si 
 \na.6r\ (6 !Wor) *al o-vveOladri !r rdv ir(5Xs/iOv, Srav dtrifrpavSr] xal dxovarj 
 tywvriv Tro\c/tov, Swrdr iroijiuif epxerat cm roOr ixOpov?, iaare xal OTT' 
 iurflr rfjr ^covijr Trr6i\a(.v i/nroi etv roiT TrvXt/iiiriS", Marmion, 
 Cauto V., 
 
 " Marmion, like charger in the stall, 
 That hears without the trumpet's call, 
 Began to chafe and swear." 
 
 2 See Boyes' Illustrations, p. 11. 
 
 8 This seems to be the sense of //ai/ris* iwola. Blomfield 
 would add iwoia to the dative, which is easier.
 
 405-431 ] AGAINST THEBES. 69 
 
 against himself. But against Tydeus will I marshal this 
 wary son of Astacus, as defender of the portals, full nobly 
 born, and one that reverences the throne of Modesty, and 
 detests too haughty language, for he is wont to be slow at 
 base acts, but no dastard. And from the sown heroes whom 
 Mars spared is Melanippus sprung a scion, and he is thor- 
 oughly a native. But the event Mars with his dice will 
 decide. And justice, his near kinswoman, makes him her 
 champion, 1 that he may ward off the foeman's spear from 
 the mother that bare him. 
 
 CH. Now may the gods grant unto our champion to be 
 successful, since with justice 2 does he speed forth in defense 
 of the city ; but I shudder to behold the sanguinary fate of 
 those who perish in behalf of their friends. 
 
 MES. To him may the gods so grant success. But Capa- 
 neus has by lot obtained his station against the Electran 
 gate. This is a giant, greater than the other aforementioned, 
 and his vaunt savors not of humanity ; but he threatens hor- 
 rors against our towers, which may fortune not bring to 
 pass ! for he declares, that whether the god is willing or 
 unwilling, he will make havoc of our city, and that not the 
 Wrath 3 of Jove, dashing down upon the plain, should stop 
 him. And he is wont to compare both the lightnings and 
 the thunder-bolts to the heat of noontide. He has a bearing 
 
 1 So Linwood. Justice is styled the near relation of Mela- 
 nippus, because he was aicxpuv apydr, v. 406. The scholiast 
 however interprets it rd rijr fwyyEveiar fixatov. 
 
 2 Dindorfs substitution of (S<*ai'ar for Hicatur is no improve- 
 ment. Paley's <5t*raioy is more elegant, but there seems little 
 reason for alteration. 
 
 3 Probably nothing more than the lightning is meant, as 
 Blomfield supposes. Paley quotes Enr. Cycl. 328, TorXov icpovei, 
 AIOJ ppovTa'io-iv el; eptv KTVVWV. And this agrees with the fate 
 of Capaneus as described in Soph. Autig. 131, sqq. ; Nonnus, 
 XXVIII. p. 480; Eur. Phcen. 1187, sqq.
 
 70 THE SEVEN [432-456. 
 
 too, a naked man bearing fire, and there gleams a torch with 
 which his hands are armed ; l and, in letters of gold, he is 
 uttering, I WILL BURN THE CITY. Against a man such as 
 
 this do thou send 2 . Who will engage with him? 
 
 Who will abide his vaunting and not tremble ? 
 
 ET. And in this case 3 also one advantage is gained upon 
 another. Of the vain conceits of man in sooth the tongue of 
 truth becomes accuser. But Capaneus is menacing, prepared 
 for action, dishonoring the gods, and practicing his tongue 
 in vain exultation ; mortal as he is, he is sending loud- 
 swelling words into heaven to the ears of Jove. But I trust 
 that, as he well deserves, the fire-bearing thunder-bolt will 
 with justice come upon him, in no wise likened to the noontide 
 warmth of the sun. Yet against him, albeit he is a very 
 violent blusterer, is a hero marshaled, fiery in his spirit, 
 stout Polyphonies, a trusty guard by the favor of Diana our 
 protectress, and of the other gods. Mention another who 
 hath had his station fixed at another of our gates. 
 
 CH. May he perish 4 who proudly vaunts against our city, 
 and may the thunder-bolt check him before that he bursts 
 into my abode, or ever, with his insolent spear force us 
 away from our maiden dwellings. 
 
 MES. And verily I will mention him that hath next had 
 
 1 Blomfield compares Ear. Bacch. 733, Ovpaot; tia x^polv 
 awAitf/icvaf. But the present construction is harsher. 
 
 2 See Blomfield. 
 
 3 I follow Blomfield and Paley. 
 
 * " We embrace this opportunity of making a grammatical 
 observation with respect to the older poets, which, to the best 
 of our knowledge, has not hitherto been noticed by any gram- 
 marian or critic. Wherever a wish or a prayer is expressed, 
 either by the single optative mood of the verb, or with nn, Ads, 
 ei yap, c?6t yap, the verb is in the second aorist, if it have a dis- 
 tinct second aorist; otherwise it may be in the present tense, 
 but is more frequently in the first aorist." Edinb. Eev. xix. 
 485.
 
 457-486.] AGAINST THEBES. 71 
 
 his post allotted against our gates : for to Eteoclus, third in 
 order, hath the third lot leapt from the inverted helm of 
 glittering brass, for him to advance his battalion against 
 the gates of Ne'is ; and he is wheeling his steeds fuming in 
 their trappings, eager to dash forward against the gates. 
 And their snaffles ring, in barbarian fashion, filled with the 
 breath of their snorting nostrils. His buckler, too, hath 
 been blazoned in no paltry style, but a man in armor is 
 treading the steps of a ladder to his foemen's tower, seeking 
 to storm it. And this man, in a combination of letters, is 
 shouting, how that not even Mars should force him from the 
 bulwarks. Do thou send also to this man a worthy cham- 
 pion to ward off from this city the servile yoke. 
 
 ET. I will send this man forthwith, and may it be with 
 good fortune ; and verily he is sent, bearing his boast in 
 deed, 1 Megareus, the offspring of Creon, of the race of the 
 sown ; 2 who will go forth from the gates not a whit terrified 
 at the noise of the mad snortings of the horses ; but, either 
 by his fall will fully pay the debt of his nurture to the land, 
 or, having taken two men 3 and the city on the shield, will 
 garnish with the spoils the house of his father. Vaunt thee 
 of another, and spare me not the recital. 
 
 CH. I pray that this side may succeed, O champion of my 
 dwellings ! and that with them it may go ill ; and as they, 
 with frenzied mind, utter exceedingly proud vaunts against 
 our city, so may Jove the avenger regard them in his wrath. 
 
 MES. Another, the fourth, who occupies the adjoining 
 gates of Onca Minerva, stands hard by with a shout, the 
 
 I I.e. not bearing a braggart inscription, but putting confi- 
 dence in his own valor. oi> was rightly thrown out by Erfurdt. 
 See Paley. 
 
 II I.e. from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus. 
 3 Eteoclus aud the figure 011 his shield.
 
 72 THE SEVEN [487-514. 
 
 shape and mighty mould of Hippomedon ; and I shuddered 
 at him as he whirled the immense orb, I mean the circum- 
 ference of his buckler I will not deny it. And assuredly 
 it was not any mean artificer in heraldry who produced this 
 work upon his buckler, a Typhon, darting forth through 
 his fire-breathing mouth dark smoke, the quivering sister 
 of fire, and the circular cavity of the hollow -bellied shield 
 hath been made farther solid with coils of serpents. He 
 himself, too, hath raised the war-cry ; and, possessed by 
 Mars, raves for the onslaught, like a Thyiad, 1 glaring ter- 
 ror. Well must we guard against the attack of such a man 
 as this, for Terror is already vaunting himself hard by our 
 
 ET. In the first place, this Onca Pallas, who dwells in our 
 suburbs, living near the gates, detesting the insolence of the 
 man, will drive him off, as a noxious serpent from her 
 young. And Hyperbius, worthy son of CEnops, hath been 
 chosen to oppose him, man to man, willing to essay his 
 destiny in the crisis of fortune ; he is open to censure neither 
 in form, nor in spirit, nor in array of arm : but Mercury 
 hath matched them fairly ; for hostile is the man to the man 
 with whom he will have to combat, and on their bucklers 
 will they bring into conflict hostile gods ; for the one hath 
 fire-breathing Typhon, and on the buckler of Hyperbius 
 father Jove is seated firm, flashing, with his bolt in his 
 hand ; and never yet did any one know of Jove being by 
 any chance vanquished. 11 Such in good sooth is the friend- 
 
 1 Like a Bacchic devotee. See Virg. JSn. IV. 301, sqq. So 
 in the Agamemnon, v. 477. 
 
 fiaprvpcT Sc ftoi (fa<rjr 
 injXou Jivovpoj, Scfia *<5i/iy, rdSe. 
 
 2 Cf. Ag. 174. Ziiva Si rij liriviieia K\a^,tav t Tev^erai (jipevuv rd irac. 
 Dindorf would omit all the following lines. There is some 
 difficulty about the sense of irpoa$i\tia, which I think Pauw
 
 5I5-537-] AGAINST THEBES. 73 
 
 ship of the divinities : we are on the side of the victors, but 
 they on that of the conquered, if at least Jove be mightier 
 in battle than Typhon. Wherefore 'tis probable that the 
 combatants will fare accordingly ; and to Hyperbius, in ac- 
 cordance with its blazonry, may Jove that is on his shield 
 become a savior. 
 
 CH. I feel confident that he who hath upon his shield 
 the adversary of Jove, the hateful form of the subterranean 
 fiend, a semblance hateful both to mortals and the everliving 
 gods, will have to leave his head before our gates. 
 
 MES. May such be the issue ! But, farthermore, I men- 
 tion the fifth, marshaled at the fifth gate, that of Boreas, by 
 the very tomb of Jove-born Amphion. And he makes oath 
 by the spear 1 which he grasps, daring to revere it more than 
 a god, and more dearly than his eyes, 2 that verily he will 
 make havoc of the city of the Cadmxans in spite of Jove : 
 thus says the fair-faced scion of a mountain-dwelling mother, 
 a stripling hero, and the down is j ust making its way through 
 his cheeks, in the spring of his prime, thick sprouting hair. 
 And he takes his post, having a ruthless spirit, not answer- 
 ing to his maidenly name, 3 and a savage aspect. Yet not 
 
 best explains as meaning " such is the god that respectively 
 befriends each of these champions." 
 
 1 Cf. Apollon. Rhod. I. 466, 'loroj vvv fdp-a Oovpov on,) irepiwtrwv 
 a\\tt)v Kt!<5AS" tut TTO\kfiotaiv deipoftai, oii&i \i dtf>\\st y.ev; r6croi> } bvrrii- 
 TIOV vep ififiv 66pv. Statius Theb. ix. 649 "ades o rnihi dextera 
 tantum Tu prsesens bellis, et inevitabile numen, Te voco, te 
 solani superum contemptor adoro." See Cerda ou Virg. jn. X. 
 773 
 
 2 So Catullus, iii. 4, 5. 
 
 Passer, delicise mese puellse, 
 Quern plus ilia oculis suis amabat. 
 
 And Vathek, p. 124 (of the English version), " Nonronihar 
 loved her cousin more than her own beautiful eyes." OLD 
 TRANSLATOR. See Valcken. on Theocrit. xi. 53. 
 
 3 A pun upon the word vapdevo; in the composition of Par- 
 thenopseus's name.
 
 74 THE SEVEN [538-566. 
 
 without his vaunt does he take stand against our gates, for 
 on his brazen-forged shield the rounded bulwark of his body, 
 he was wielding the reproach of our city, the Sphinx of 
 ruthless maw affixed by means of studs, a gleaming embossed 
 form ; and under her she holds a man, one of the Cadmseans, 
 so that against this man 1 most shafts are hurled. And he, a 
 youth, Parthenopaeus an Arcadian, seems to have come to 
 fight in no short measure, 2 and not to disgrace the length of 
 way that he has traversed ; for this man, such as he is, is a 
 sojourner, and, by way of fully repaying Argos for the 
 goodly nurture she has given him, he utters against these 
 towers menaces, which may the deity not fulfill. 
 
 ET. O may they receive from the gods the things which 
 they are purposing in those very unhallowed vaunts ! As- 
 suredly they would perish most miserably in utter destruc- 
 tion. But there is [provided] for this man also, the Arca- 
 dian of whom you speak, a man that is no braggart, but his 
 his hand discerns what should be done, Actor, brother of the 
 one aforementioned, who will not allow either a tongue, 
 without deeds, streaming within our gates, to aggravate 
 mischiefs, nor him to make his way within who bears upon 
 his hostile buckler the image of the wild beast, most odious 
 monster, which from the outside shall find fault with him 
 who bears it within, when it meets with a thick battering 
 under the city. So, please the gods, may I be speaking the 
 truth. 
 
 CH. The tale pierces my bosom, the locks of my hair 
 stand erect, when I hear of the big words of these proudly- 
 
 1 The figure on the shield is undoubtedly the one meant. 
 
 2 I.e. " he will fight by wholesale." See comm. Perhaps the 
 English phrase to " deal a blow," to " lend a blow," is the 
 nearest approximation to this curious idiom. Boyes quotes 
 some neat illustrations.
 
 567-585.] AGAINST THEBES. 75 
 
 vaunting impious men. Oh ! would that the gods would 
 destroy them in the land. 
 
 MES. I will tell of the sixth, a man most prudent, and in 
 valor the best, the seer, the mighty Ampliiaraus ; for he, 
 having been marshaled against the gate of Homolois, reviles 
 mighty Tydeus full oft with reproaches, as the homicide, the 
 troubler of the state, chief teacher of the mischiefs of Argos, 
 the summoner of Erinnys, minister of slaughter, and adviser 
 of these mischiefs to Adrastus. Then again going up 1 to thy 
 brother, the mighty Polynices, he casts his eye aloft, and, at 
 last, reproachfully dividing his name [into syllables, 2 ] he 
 calls to him : and through his mouth he gives utterance to 
 this speech "Verily such a deed is well-pleasing to the 
 gods, and glorious to hear of and to tell in after times, that 
 you are making havoc of your paternal city, and its native 
 gods, having brought into it a foreign armament. And what 
 Justice shall staunch the fountain of thy mother's tears? 
 
 1 This passage is a fair instance of the impossibility of con- 
 struing certain portions of ./Eschylus as they are edited. Din- 
 dorf in his notes approves of Dobree's emendation, xal r6v adv 
 avr dSc\<jidv if irarpdj fiApov 'E virrid ^iov ovofia, and SO Paley, except 
 tiiat he reads a/ipa with Schutz, and renders it " oculo in patrio 
 (Edipi fatum religiose sublato." Blomfield's 7rpo<r/<oAa)i> bn6<nropov 
 seems simpler, and in better taste. 6/jdoTrpov was doubtless ob- 
 literated by the gloss d6c\<}>eov (an Ionic form ill suited to the 
 senarius), and the (5/*o<oAevroc caused the remainder of the 
 error. Burges first proposed <5/5<nropoi/ in Troad. Append, p. 134, 
 D. As to Paley's idea that GEdipus' death was caused ' per 
 contentiorim filii indolem," I can not find either anthority for 
 the fact, or reason for its mention here, and I have therefore 
 followed Blomfield. Dindorfs translation I can not under- 
 stand. The explanations of sfwrriajwi' ovopa are amusing, and 
 that is all. 
 
 2 I.e. saying no\vvtiKc; iro\vveiKes. Paley ingeniously remarks 
 that tvtarcitrOnt is here used in a double sense, both of dividing 
 and reproaching. See his note, and cf. Phcen. 636. dAijOcoj 
 Svojia Ho\'jveiKri Trarijp cdero <roi 9sict } irpovoia t itixitnv iTtJJvonov,
 
 76 THE SEVEN [586-615. 
 
 And how can thy father-land, after having been taken by the 
 spear through thy means, ever be an ally to thee ? I, for 
 my part, in very truth shall fatten this soil, seer as I am, 
 buried beneath a hostile earth. Let us to the battle, I look 
 not for a dishonorable fall." Thus spake the seer, wielding 
 a fair-orbed shield, all of brass ; but no device was on its 
 circle for he wishes not to seem but to be righteous, reap- 
 ing fruit from a deep furrow in his mind, from which sprout 
 forth his goodly counsels. Against this champion I advise 
 that thou send antagonists, both wise and good. A dread . 
 adversary is he that reveres the gods. 
 
 ET. Alas ! for the omen 1 that associates a righteous man 
 with the impious ! Indeed in every matter, nothing is worse 
 than evil fellowship the field of infatuation has death for 
 its fruits. 2 For whether it be that a pious man hath em- 
 barked in a vessel along with violent sailors, and some vil- 
 lany, he perishes with the race of men abhorred of heaven ; 
 or, being righteous, and having rightly fallen into the same 
 toils with his countrymen, violators of hospitality, and un- 
 mindful of the gods, he is beaten down, smitten with the 
 scourge of the deity, which falls alike on all. Now this seer, 
 I mean the son of Oi'cleus, a moderate, just, good, and pious 
 man, a mighty prophet, associated with unholy bold-mouthed 
 men, in spite of his [better] judgment, when they made their 
 long march, by the favor of Jove, shall be drawn along with 
 them to go to the distant city. 3 I fancy, indeed, that he 
 
 1 See Griffiths. 
 
 2 Porson, and all the subsequent editors have bracketed this 
 verse as spurious, but the chief objection to this seiise of 
 Kapirl&oOai seems to be obviated by Paley. See his note. 
 
 3 Either with ^-uAn/or v6\tv there is much difficulty, as with- 
 out an epithet TrSXij seems harshly applied to Hades. Paley 
 thinks that irfiv fiaxpav refers both to ^0^" and TTO\IV. Dindorf 
 adopts his usual plan when a difficulty occurs, and proposes to
 
 616-640.] AGAINST THEBES. 77 
 
 will not make an attack on our gates, not as wanting spirit, 
 nor from cowardice of disposition, but he knows that it is his 
 doom to fall in battle, if there is to be any fruit in the oracles 
 of Apollo : 'tis his wont too to hold his peace, or to speak 
 what is seasonable. Nevertheless against him we will mar- 
 shal a man, mighty Lasthenes, a porter surly to strangers, 
 and who bears an aged mind, but a youthful form ; quick is 
 his eye, and he is not slow of hand to snatch his spear made 
 naked from his left hand. 1 But for mortals to succeed is a 
 boon of the deity. 
 
 CH. O ye gods, give ear to our righteous supplications, 
 and graciously bring it to pass that our city may be success- 
 ful, while ye turn the horrors wrought by the spear upon the 
 invaders of our country ; and may Jove, having flung them 
 [to a distance] from our towers, slay them with his thunder- 
 bolt 
 
 MES. Now will I mention this the seventh, against the 
 seventh gate, thine own brother what calamities too he im- 
 precates and prays for against our city ; that, he having scaled 
 the towers, and been proclaimed 2 to the land, after having 
 shouted out the paean of triumph at the capture, may engage 
 with thee ; and, having slain thee, may die beside thee, or 
 avenge himself on thee alive, that dishonored, that banished 
 him, 3 by exile after the very same manner. This does mighty 
 Polynices clamor, and he summons the gods of his race and 
 
 omit the line. Fritzsche truly said of this learned critic, that 
 if he had the privilege, of omitting everything he could not un- 
 derstand, the plays of the Grecian dramatists would speedily 
 be reduced to a collection of fragments. 
 
 1 When the spear was not in use, it was held in the left hand, 
 under the shield. See Blomfield. 
 
 2 Sc. king, or victor. Blomfield adopts the former, 
 
 3 This passage is not satisfactory. Paley reads di> 
 but I am doubtful about n3j . . . . rdv&c . . . Tpfaov 
 
 4*
 
 78 THE SEVEN [641-674. 
 
 fatherland to regard his supplications. He has, moreover, a 
 newly-constructed shield, well suited [to his arm] and a double 
 device wrought upon it. For a woman is leading on a 
 mailed warrior, forged out of brass, conducting him 
 decorously ; and so she professes to be Justice, as the in- 
 scription tells : I WILL BRING BACK THIS MAN, AND HE 
 SHALL HAVE THE CITY OF HIS FATHERS, AND A DWELLING 
 
 IN THE PALACE. Such are their devices ; and do thou thy- 
 self now determine whom it is that thou thinkest proper to 
 send : since never at any time shalt thou censure me for my 
 tidings ; but do thou thyself determine the management of 
 the vessel of the state. 
 
 ET. O heaven-frenzied, and great abomination of the 
 gods ! Oh ! for our race of CEdipus, worthy of all mourn- 
 ing Alas for me ! now verily are the curses of my sire 
 coining to an accomplishment. But it becomes me not to 
 weep or wail, lest birth be given to a lament yet more intoler- 
 able. But to Polynices, that well deserves his name, I say, 
 soon shall we know what issue his blazonry will have ; 
 whether letters wrought in gold, vainly vaunting on his 
 buckler, along with frenzy of soul will restore him. If 
 indeed Justice, the virgin daughter of Jove, attended on 
 his actions or his thoughts, perchance this might be. But 
 neither when he escape the darkness of the womb, nor in 
 his infancy, nor ever in his boyhood, nor in the gathering 
 of the hair on his chin, did Justice look on him, or deem 
 him worthy her regards : nor truly do I suppose that she 
 will now take her stand near to hhn, in his ill-omened 
 possession of his father-land. Truly she would then in all 
 reason be falsely called Justice, were she to consort with a 
 man all-daring in his soul. Trusting in this I will go, and 
 face him in person. Who else could do so with better right ? 
 Leader against leader, brother against brother, foeman with
 
 675-698-] AGAINST THEBES. 79 
 
 foeman, shall I take my stand. Bring me with all speed my 
 greaves, my spear, and my armor of defense against the stones. 
 
 [Exit MESSENGER. 
 
 CH. Do not, O dearest of men, son of CEdipus, become in 
 wrath like to him against whom thou hast most bitterly 
 spoken. Enough it is that Cadmseans come to the encounter 
 with Argives. For such bloodshed admits of expiation. But 
 the death of own brothers thus mutually wrought by their 
 own hands of this pollution there is no decay. 
 
 Ex. If any one receives evil without disgrace, be it so ; 
 for the only advantage is among the dead : but of evil and 
 disgraceful things, thou canst not tell me honor. 
 
 CH. Why art thou eager, my son? let not At, full of 
 wrath, raging with the spear, hurry thee away but banish 
 the first impulse of [evil] passion 
 
 ET. Since the deity with all power urges on the matter, 
 let the whole race of Laius, abhorred by Phoebus, having 
 received for its portion the wave of Cocytus, drift down with 
 the wind. 
 
 CH. So fierce a biting lust for unlawful blood hurries thee 
 on to perpetrate the shedding of a man's blood, of which the 
 fruit is bitter. 1 
 
 Ex. Ay, for the hateful curse of my dear father, consum- 
 mated, sits hard beside me with dry tearless eyes, telling me 
 that profit comes before my after doom. 2 
 
 CH. But do not accelerate it ; thou wilt not be called das- 
 tardly if thou honorably preservest thy life and Erinnys, 3 
 
 1 In the original there is, perhaps, a slight mixture of con- 
 struction, tiiftaro; partly depending upon xapiros implied in 
 TriKp6icapTrov, and partly upon dripetnutm, dvSpoKr..aifi. being the 
 slaughter of a man, by which his blood is shed. 
 
 2 Wellauer: denuntianslucrum, quod prius erit morte posteriore : 
 i.e. victoriam quam sequetur mors. And so Griffiths and Paley. 
 
 3 Shakespeare uses this name in the opening speech of King 
 Henry, in part I. :
 
 8o THE SEVEN [699-721. 
 
 with her murky tempest, enters not the dwelling where the 
 gods receive a sacrifice from the hands [of the inmates]. 
 
 ET. By the gods, indeed, we have now for some time been 
 in a manner neglected, and the pleasure which arises from 
 our destruction is welcomed by them ; why should we any 
 longer fawn 1 upon our deadly doom ? 
 
 CH. Do so now, while it is in thy power ; since the demon, 
 that may alter with a distant shifting of his temper, will 
 perchance come with a gentler air ; but now he still rages. 
 
 ET. Ay, for the curses of (Edipus have raged beyond all 
 bounds ; and too true were my visions of phantoms seen in 
 my slumbers, dividers of my father's wealth. 8 
 
 CH. Yield thee to women, albeit that thou lovest them not. 
 
 ET. Say ye then what one may allow you ; but it must not 
 be at length. 
 
 CH. Go not thou on in this way to the seventh gate. 
 
 ET. Whetted as I am, thou wilt not blunt me by argu- 
 ment. 
 
 CH. Yet god, at all events, honors an inglorious victory. 
 
 ET. It ill becomes a warrior to acquiesce in this advice. 
 
 CH. "What ! wilt thou shed the blood of thine own 
 brother ? 
 
 ET. By heaven's leave, he shall not elude destruction. 
 
 [Exit ETEOCLES. 
 
 CH. I shudder with dread that the power that lays waste 
 this house, not like the gods, the all-true, the evil-boding 
 Erinnys summoned by the curses of the father, is bringing 
 
 No more the thirsty Erinnys of this soil 
 
 Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood. 
 
 OLD TRANSLATOR. 
 
 1 See above, v. 383. 
 
 2 Somewhat to the same effect is the dream of Atossa in 
 the Persse.
 
 722-752.] AGAINST THEBES. 81 
 
 to a consummation the wrathful curses of distracted CEdipus. 1 
 'Tis this quarrel, fatal to his sons, that arouses her. And 
 the Chalybian stranger, emigrant from Scythia, is appor- 
 tioning their shares, a fell divider of possessions, the stern- 
 hearted steel, 2 allotting them land to occupy, just as much 
 as it may be theirs to possess when dead, bereft of their 
 large domains. 3 When they shall have fallen, slain by each 
 other's hands in mutual slaughter, and the dust of the ground 
 shall have drunk up the black-clotted blood of murder, who 
 \vill furnish expiation? who will purify them? Alas for 
 the fresh troubles mingled with the ancient horrors of this 
 family ! for I speak of the ancient transgression with its 
 speedy punishment ; yet it abides unto the third generation ; 
 since Lai'us, in spite of Apollo, who had thrice declared, in 
 the central oracles of Pytho, that, dying without issue, he 
 would save the state,* did, notwithstanding, overcome by 
 his friends, in his infatuation beget his own destruction, the 
 parricide CEdipus, who dared to plant in an unhallowed 
 
 1 I prefer Blomfield's transposition to Dindorf s correction, 
 p\aii'i'pp6b>s, which, though repudiated in the notes, is still 
 adopted by Paley. 
 
 2 A noble impersonation of the sword. 
 
 3 Shakespeare, King John, Act 4, sc. 2 : 
 
 That blood, which own'd the breadth of all this isle, 
 Three foot of it doth hold. 
 King Henry IV. part I. Act 5, sc. 5 : 
 
 Fare thee well, great heart ! 
 
 Ill-weav'd ambition, how much art thou shrunk ! 
 When that this body did contain a spirit, 
 A kingdom for it was too small a bound ; 
 But now, two paces of the vilest earth 
 Is room enough. 
 
 4 Surely the full stop after Tt6\iv in v. 749 should be removed, 
 and a colon, or mark of hyperbaton substituted. Oil looking at 
 Paley's edition, I find myself anticipated.
 
 82 THE SEVEN [7S3-79O. 
 
 field, where he had been reared, a bloody root. 'Twas 
 frenzy linked the distracted pair ; and as it were, a sea of 
 troubles brings on one billow that subsides, and rears another 
 triply cloven, which too dashes about the stern of our state. 
 But between [it and us] there stretches a fence at a small 
 interval, a tower in width alone. 1 And I fear lest the city 
 should be overcome along with its princes. For the execra- 
 tions, that were uttered long ago, are finding their accom- 
 plishment : bitter is the settlement, and deadly things in 
 their consummation pass not away. The wealth of enter- 
 prising merchants, 2 too thickly stowed, brings with it a cast- 
 ing overboard from the stern. For whom of mortals did the 
 gods, and his fellow-inmates in the city, and the many lives 
 of herding men, 3 admire so much as they then honored 
 CEdipus, who had banished from the realm the baneful pest 
 that made men her prey. But when he unhappy was ap- 
 prised of his wretched marriage, despairing in his sorrow, 
 with frenzied heart, he perpetrated a two-fold horror ; he 
 deprived himself with parricidal hand of the eyes that were 
 more precious than his children. And indignant because of 
 his scanty supply of food, 4 he sent upon his sons, alas ! alas ! 
 a curse horrible in utterance, even that they should some 
 time or other share his substance between them with sword- 
 wielding hand ; and now I tremble lest the swift Erinnys 
 should be on the point of fulfilling that prayer. 
 
 1 This is Griffiths' version of this awkward passage. I should 
 prefer reading d\Kav with Paley, from one MS. So also Burges. 
 
 2 See my note on Soph. Philoct. 708, ed. Bohn. 
 
 3 This seems the best way of rendering the bold periphrase, 
 I TroX'i/soroy aiijv fiporuv. See Griffiths. 
 
 4 I follow Paley. Diudorf, in his notes, agrees in reading 
 rpo ./.ay, but the metre seems to require riVoro. Griffiths de- 
 fends the common reading, but against the ancient authority 
 of the schol. on (Ed. Col. 1375. See Blomfield.
 
 791-809.] AGAINST THEBES. 83 
 
 Re enter MESSENGER. 
 
 Be of good cheer, maidens that have been nurtured by 
 your mothers. 1 This city hath escaped the yoke of servi- 
 tude ; the vauntings of our mighty foes have fallen ; and our 
 city is calm, and hath not admitted a leak from the many 
 buffets of the surge ; our fortification too stands proof, and 
 we have fenced our gates with champions fighting single- 
 handed, and bringing surety ; for the most part, at six of 
 our gates, it is well ; but the seventh, the revered lord of 
 the seventh, sovereign Apollo, chose for himself, bringing 
 to a consummation the ancient indiscretions of Lai'us. 
 
 CH. And what new event is happening to our city ? 
 
 MES. These men have fallen by hands that dealt mutual 
 slaughter. 2 
 
 CH. Who ? What is it thou sayest ! I am distracted 
 with terror at thy tidings. 
 
 MES. Now be calm and listen, the race of CEdipus 
 
 CH. Alas for me wretched 1 I am a prophetess of horrors. 
 
 MES. Stretched in the dust are they beyond all dispute. 
 
 CH. Came they even to that ? bitter then are thy tidings, 
 yet speak them. 
 
 MES. Even thus [too surely] were they destroyed by 
 brotherly hands. 
 
 CH. Even thus was the demon at once impartial to both. 
 
 1 Blomfield with reason thinks that a verse has been lost. 
 
 2 The care which the Messenger takes to show the bright 
 side of the picture first, reminds us of Northumberland's 
 speech, Shakespeare, King Henry IV. part II. Act 1, sc. 1 : 
 
 This thou would'st say Your son did thus and thus; 
 
 Your brother, thus; so fought the noble Douglas; 
 
 Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds; 
 
 But in the end, to stop mine ear indeed, 
 
 Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise, 
 
 Ending with brother, son, and all are dead. OLD TKANSL.
 
 84 THE SEVEN [810-828. 
 
 MES. And he himself, to be sure of this, is cutting off the 
 ill-fated race. 
 
 CH. Over such events one may both rejoice and weep 
 [rejoice] at the success of our city but [mourn because] 1 
 our princes, the two generals, have portioned out the whole 
 possession of their substance with the hammer-wrought 
 Scythian steel, and they will possess of land just as much as 
 they receive at their burial, carried off according to the un- 
 happy imprecations of their sire. 
 
 MES. The city is rescued, but earth hath drank the blood 
 of the brother princes through their slaughter of each other. 
 
 [Exit MESSENGER. 2 
 
 CH. Oh mighty Jove ! and tutelary divinities of our city ! 
 ye that do in very deed protect these towers of Cadmus, am 
 I to rejoice and raise a joyous hymn to the savior of our city, 
 the averter of mischief, or shall I bewail the miserable and 
 ill-fated childless 3 commanders, who, in very truth, cor- 
 rectly, according to their name, 4 full of rancor, have per- 
 
 1 This is a good example of the figure chiasmus, the force of 
 which I have expressed by the bracketed words repeated from 
 the two infinities. See Latin examples in the notes of ArntZe- 
 nius ou Mamertin. Geneth. 8, p. 27; Pang. Vett. t. i. 
 
 2 The Messenger retires to dress for the Herald's part. 
 Horace's rule, " Nee quarta loqui persona laboret," seems to 
 
 have been drawn from the practice of the Greek stage. Only 
 three actors were allowed to each of the competitor-dramatists, 
 and these were assigned to them by lot. (Hesychius, Ns/ojmr 
 woiepiTtSv.) Thus, for instance, as is remarked by a writer in 
 the Quarterly Eeview, in the CEdipus at Colonus, v. 509, Is- 
 mene goes to offer sacrifice, and, after about forty lines, returns 
 in the character of Theseus. Soon afterward, v. 847, Antigone 
 is carried off by Creon's attendants, and returns as Theseus 
 after about the same interval as before. OLD TRANSLATION. 
 The translator had misquoted the gloss of Hesychius. 
 
 3 This is the tragic account. See Soph. Antig. 170, sqq. ; 
 Eurip. Phsen. 757, sqq. But other authors mention descend- 
 ants of both. * Another pun on lloXuw^r.
 
 829-865.] AGAINST THEBES. 85 
 
 ished in impious purpose ? Oh dark and fatal curse of the 
 race and of CEdipus, what horrible chill is this that is falling 
 upon my heart ?* I, like a Thyiad, have framed a dirge for 
 the tomb, hearing of the dead, dabbled in blood, that per- 
 ished haplessly verily this meeting of spears was ill-omened. 
 The imprecation of the father hath taken full effect, and 
 hath not failed : and the unbelieving schemes of Lai'us have 
 lasted even until now ; and care is through our city, and the 
 divine declarations lose not their edge Alas ! worthy of 
 many a sigh, ye have accomplished this horror surpassing 
 credence ; and lamentable sufferings have come indeed. 
 This is self-evident, the tale of the messenger is before my 
 eyes Double are our sorrows, double are the horrors of them 
 that have fallen by mutual slaughter ; doubly shared are 
 these consummated sufferings. What shall I say ? What, 
 but that of a certainty troubles on troubles are constant in- 
 mates of this house? But, my friends, ply the speeding 
 stroke of your hands about your heads, before the gale of 
 sighs, which ever wafts on its passage the bark, on which no 
 sighs are heard, with sable sails, the freighted with the 
 dead, untrodden for Apollo, the sunless, across Acheron, and 
 to the invisible all-receiving shore. 1 
 
 But [enough] ! for here are coming to this bitter office 
 both Antigone and Ismene. I am assured beyond all doubt 
 that they will send forth a fitting wail from their lovely 
 deep-cinctured bosoms. And right it is that we, before the 
 
 1 Cf. Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, sec. 3 : 
 
 " I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins." 
 
 2 This passage is confessedly corrupt. Paley seems to have 
 rightly restored <5<m>Xo>> from the 5on>Xo< 8twfi&a in Bobertelli's 
 edition. This ship, as he remarks, would truly be ooroXor, in 
 opposition to the one sent to Delphi, which was properly said 
 o-rtXXcCTflai 7ri 9t<iipia.v. The words do-ri/jij' *6\\uvi confirm this 
 opinion. In regard to the allusions, see Stanley and Blonifield, 
 also Wyttenbach on Plato Phsedon. sub. init. 
 
 5
 
 86 THE SEVEN [866-907. 
 
 sound of their wailing reach us, both ejaculate the dismal- 
 sounding chaunt of Erinnys, and sing a hateful paean to 
 Pluto. Alas ! ye that are the most hapless in your sister- 
 hood of all women that fling the zone around their robes, I 
 weep, I mourn, and there is no guile about so as not to be 
 truly wailing from my very soul. 
 
 SEMI-CHOKUS. Alas ! alas ! ye frantic youths, distrustful 
 of friends, and unsubdued by troubles, have wretched seized 
 on your paternal dwelling with the spear. 
 
 SEMI-CH. Wretched in sooth were they who found a 
 wretched tleath to the bane of their houses. 
 
 SEMI-CH. Alas ! alas 1 ye that overthrew the walls of 
 your palace, and having cast an eye on bitter monarchy, how 
 have ye now settled your claims with the steel ? 
 
 SEMI-CH. And too truly hath awful Erinnys brought [the 
 curses] of their father CEdipus to a consummation. 
 
 SEMI-CH. Smitten through your left Smitten in very 
 truth, and through sides that sprung from a common womb. 
 
 SEMI-CH. Alas for them, wretched I Alas ! for the impre- 
 cations of death which avenged murder by murder. 
 
 SEMI-CH. Thou speakest of the stroke that pierced through 
 and through those that were smitten in their houses and in 
 their persons with speechless rage, and the doom of discord 
 brought upon them by the curses of their father. 
 
 SEMI-CH. And moreover, sighing pervades the city, the 
 towers sigh, the land that loved her heroes sighs ; and for 
 posterity remains the substance by reason of which, by rea- 
 son of which, 1 contention came upon them whom evil des- 
 tiny, and the issue of death. 
 
 SEMI-CH. In the fierceness of their hearts they divided 
 
 1 This repetition of <5' Z>t> is not altogether otiose. Their con- 
 tention for estate was the cause both of their being aMpopot and 
 of the yct<cor that ensued.
 
 908-950.] AGAINST THEBES. 87 
 
 between them the possessions, so as to have an equal share ; 
 but the arbiter 1 escapes not censure from their friends, and 
 joyless was their warfare. 
 
 SEMI-CH. Smitten by the steel, here they lie ; and smitten 
 by the steel 2 there await them one may perchance ask what ? 
 the inheritance of the tombs of their fathers. 
 
 SEMI-CH. From the house the piercing groan sends forth 
 its sound loudly over them, mourning with a sorrow suffer- 
 ings as o'er its own, melancholy, a foe to mirth, sincerely 
 weeping from the very soul, which is worn down while I 
 wail for these two princes. 
 
 SEMI-CH. We may say too of these happy men that they 
 both wrought many mischiefs to their countrymen, and to 
 the ranks of all the strangers, that perished in great num- 
 bers in battle. 
 
 SEMI-CH. Ill-fated was she that bare them before all wo- 
 men, as many as are mothers of children. Having taken to 
 herself her own son for a husband, she brought forth these, 
 and they have ended their existence thus by fraternal hands 
 that dealt mutual slaughter. 
 
 SEMI-CH. Fraternal in very truth ! and utterly undone 
 were they by a severing in no wise amicable, by frenzied 
 strife at the consummation of their feud. 
 
 SEMI-CH. But their emnity is terminated ; and in the 
 reeking earth is their life-blood mingled, and truly are they 
 of the same blood. A bitter arbiter of strife is the stranger 
 from beyond the sea, the whetted steel that bounded forth 
 from the fire ; and bitter is the horrible distributer of their 
 substance, Mars, who hath brought the curse of their father 
 truly to its consummation. 
 
 1 I.e. the sword. Cf. v. 885. 
 
 2 This epithet applied to their ancestral tombs doubtless al- 
 ludes to the violent deaths of La'ius and CEdipus.
 
 88 THE SEVEN [951-975- 
 
 SEMI-CH. Hapless youths ! They have obtained their por- 
 tion of heaven-awarded woes, and beneath their bodies shall 
 be a fathomless wealth of earth. 1 Alas ! ye that have made 
 your houses bloom with many troubles ! And at its fall 
 these Curses raised the shout of triumph in shrill strain, 
 when the race had been put to flight in total rout ; a trophy 
 of Ate" has been reared at the gate at which they smote each 
 other, and, having overcome both, the demon rested. 
 Enter ANTIGONE and ISMENE. 
 
 ANT. When wounded thou didst wound again. 2 
 
 ISM. And thou, having dealt death, didst perish. 
 
 ANT. With the spear thou didst slay. 
 
 ISM. By the spear thou didst fall. 
 
 ANT. Wretched in thy deeds ! 
 
 ISM. Wretched in thy sufferings 1 
 
 ANT. Let tears arise. 
 
 ISM. Let groans resound. 
 
 ANT. Having slain, he shall lie prostrate. Alas ! alas ! 
 my soul is maddening with sighs. 
 
 ISM. And my heart mourns within me. 
 
 ANT. Alas ! thou that art worthy of all lamentation ! 
 
 ISM. And thou again also utterly wretched. 
 
 ANT. By a friend didst thou fall. 
 
 ISM. And a friend didst thou slay. 
 
 ANT. Double horrors to tell of. 
 
 ISM. Double horrors to behold ! 
 
 1 On the enallage o-co/iart for a&paai see Griffiths. The poet 
 means to say that this will be all their possession after death. 
 Still Blomfield's reading, xupan, seems more elegant and satis- 
 factory. 
 
 2 Pauw remarks that Polynices is the chief subject of Anti- 
 gone's mourning, while Ismene bewails Eteocles. This may 
 illustrate much of the following dialogue, as well as explain 
 whence Sophocles derived his master-piece of character, the 
 Thebau martyr-heroine, Antigone.
 
 976-xooo.] AGAINST THEBES. 89 
 
 ANT. These horrors are near akin to such sorrows. 
 
 ISM. And we their sisters here are near to our brothers. 
 
 CH. Alas ! thou Destiny, awarder of bitterness, wretched t 
 and thou dread shade of CEdipus ! and dark Erinnys ! verily 
 art thou great in might. 
 
 ANT. Alas ! alas ! sufferings dismal to behold hath he 
 shown to me after his exile. 
 
 ANT. And he returned not when he had slain him. 
 
 ISM. No but after being saved he lost his life. 
 
 ANT. In very truth he lost it. 
 
 ISM. Ay, and he cut off his brother. 
 
 ANT. Wretched family ! 
 
 ISM. That hath endured wretchedness. Woes that are 
 wretched and of one name. Thoroughly steeped in three- 
 fold sufferings. 
 
 ANT. Deadly to tell 
 
 ISM. Deadly to look on. 
 
 CH. Alas ! alas ! thou Destiny, awarder of bitterness, 
 wretched ! and thou dread shade of CEdipus ! and dark 
 Erinnys ! verily art thou great in might. 
 
 ANT. Thou in sooth knowest this by passing through it. 
 
 ISM. And so dost thou, having learned it just as soon as he. 
 
 ANT. After that thou didst return to the city. 
 
 ISM. An antagonist too to this man here in battle-fray. 
 
 ANT. Deadly to tell. 
 
 ISM. Deadly to look on. 
 
 ANT. Alas ! the trouble. 
 
 ISM. Alas ! the horrors upon our family and our land, 
 and me above all. 
 
 ANT. Alas ! alas I and me, be sure, more than all. 
 
 ISE. Alas ! alas ! for the wretched horrors 1 O sovereign 
 Eteocles, our chieftain ! 
 
 ANT. Alas ! ye most miserable of all men. 
 5*
 
 90 THE SEVEN [1001-1025. 
 
 ISM. Alas ! ye possessed by At. 
 
 ANT. Alas ! alas ! where in the land shall we place them 
 both ? Alas ! in the spot that is most honorable. Alas ! 
 alas ! a woe fit to sleep beside my father. 1 
 Enter HERALD. 
 
 'Tis my duty to announce the good pleasure and the de- 
 cree of the senators of the people of this city of Cadmus. It 
 is resolved to bury this body of Eteocles for his attachment 
 to his country, with the dear interment in earth ! for in re- 
 pelling our foes he met death in the city, and being pure in 
 respect to the sacred rites of his country, blameless hath he 
 fallen where 'tis glorious for the young to fall ; thus, indeed, 
 hath it been commissioned me to announce concerning this 
 corpse : But [it has been decreed] to cast out unburied, a 
 prey for dogs, this the corpse of his brother Polynices, inas- 
 much as he would have been the overturner of the land of 
 Cadmus, if some one of the gods had not stood in opposition 
 to his spear : and even now that he is dead, he will lie under 
 the guilt of pollution with the gods of his country, whom he 
 having dishonored was for taking the city by bringing against 
 it a foreign host. So it is resolved that he, having been 
 buried dishonorably by winged fowls, should receive his 
 recompense, and that neither piling up by hands of the 
 mound over his tomb should follow, nor any one honor him 
 with shrill-voiced wailings, but that he be ungraced with a 
 funeral at the hands of his friends. Such is the decree of 
 the magistracy of the Cadmaeans. 
 
 1 Throughout this scene I have followed Dindorf s text, al- 
 though many improvements have been made in the disposition 
 of the dramatis personse. Every one will confess that the 
 length of io) i(j commonplaces in this scene would be much 
 against the play, but for the animated conclusion, a conclusion, 
 however, that must lose all its finest interest to the reader who 
 is unacquainted with the Antigone of Sophocles !
 
 I026-I049-] AGAINST THEBES. 91 
 
 ANT. But I say to the rulers of the Cadmseans, if not an- 
 other single person is willing to take part with me in bury- 
 ing him, I will bury him, and will expose myself 1 to peril 
 by burying my brother.^ And I feel no shame at being 
 guilty of this disobedient insubordination against the city. 
 Powerful is the tie of the common womb from which we 
 sprung, from a wretched mother and a hapless sire. Where- 
 fore, my soul, do thou, willing with the willing share in his 
 woes, with the dead, thou living, with sisterly feeling and 
 nought shall lean-bellied wolves tear his flesh let no one 
 suppose it. All woman though I be, I will contrive a tomb 
 and a deep-dug grave for him, bearing earth in the bosom- 
 fold of my fine linen robe, and I myself will cover him ; let 
 none imagine the contrary : an effective scheme shall aid 
 my boldness. 
 
 HER. I bid thee not to act despite the state in this 
 matter. 
 
 ANT. I bid thee not announce to me superfluous things. 
 
 HER. Yet stern is a people that has just escaped troubles. 
 
 ANT. Ay, call it stern 2 yet this [corpse] shall not lie 
 unburied. 
 
 HER. What ! wilt thou honor with a tomb him whom our 
 state abhors ? 3 
 
 ANT. Heretofore he has not been honored by the gods.* 
 
 1 Wellauer (not Scholfield, as Griffiths says) defends the com- 
 mon reading from Herodot. V. 49. 
 
 2 rpaxwe But T. Burgess' emendation rpaxvr ye. seems better, 
 and is approved by Blomfield. 
 
 3 Soph. Ant. 44. i? yap voci~ Odvretv cip' dv6pprirov v6\ei. 
 
 * I have taken Griffiths' translation of what Dindorf rightly 
 calls "lectio vitiosa," and of stuff that no sane person can be- 
 lieve came from the hand of ^Eschylus. Paley, who has often 
 seen the truth where all others have failed, ingeniously sup- 
 poses that o-ii is a mistaken insertion, and, omitting it, takes 
 iiarenpriTat in this sense : "jam hie non amplius a diis hmoratur ;
 
 92 THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES. [.1050-1078 
 
 HER. Not so, at least before he put this realm in jeop- 
 ardy. 
 
 ANT. Having suffered injuriously he repaid with injury. 
 
 HEB. Ay, but this deed of his fell on all instead of one. 
 
 ANT. Contention is the last of the gods to finish a dis- 
 pute, 1 and I will bury him ; make no more words. 
 
 HER. Well, take thine own way yet I forbid thee. 
 
 [Exit HERALD. 
 
 CH. Alas ! alas ! O ye fatal Furies, proudly triumphant, 
 and destructive to this race, ye that have ruined the family 
 of CEdipus from its root. What will become of me ? What 
 shall I do ? What can I devise ? How shall I have the 
 heart neither to bewail thee nor to escort thee to the tomb ? 
 But I dread and shrink from the terror of the citizens. 
 Thou, at all events, shalt in sooth have many mourners ; 
 but he, wretched one, departs unsigned for, having the 
 solitary-wailing dirge of his sister. Who will agree to 
 this? 
 
 SEM. Let the state do or not do aught to those who bewail 
 Polynices. We, on this side will go and join to escort his 
 funeral procession ; for both this sorrow is common to the 
 race, and the state at different times sanctions different 
 maxims of justice. 
 
 SEM. But we will go with this corpse, as both the city 
 and justice join to sanction. For next to the Immortals and 
 the might of Jove, this man prevented the city of the Cad- 
 maeans from being destroyed, and thoroughly overwhelmed 
 by the surge of foreign enemies. 
 
 ergo ego eum honorabo." See his highly satisfactory note, to 
 which I will only add that the reasoning of the Antigone of 
 Sophocles, vss. 515, sqq. gives ample confirmation to his view of 
 this passage. 
 
 1 Blomfield would either omit this verse, or assign it to the 
 chorus.
 
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