Aeschylus

Four Plays of Aeschylus

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My mind shall hoard, with Zeus our sire to aid.

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      Even so—with gracious aspect let him aid.

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      Fain were I now to seat me by thy side.

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      Now dally not, but put our thought in act.

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      Zeus, pity our distress, or e'er we die.

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      If so he will, your toils to joy will turn.

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      Lo, on this shrine, the semblance of a bird.{2}

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      Zeus' bird of dawn it is; invoke the sign.

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      Thus I invoke the saving rays of morn.

      {Footnote: 2: The whole of this dialogue in alternate verses is disarranged in the MSS. The re-arrangement which has approved itself to Paley has been here followed. It involves, however, a hiatus, instead of the line to which this note is appended. The substance of the lost line being easily deducible from the context, it has been supplied in the translation.}

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      Next, bright Apollo, exiled once from heaven.

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      The exiled god will pity our exile.

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      Yea, may he pity, giving grace and aid.

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      Whom next invoke I, of these other gods?

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      Lo, here a trident, symbol of a god.

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      Who {3} gave sea-safety; may he bless on land!

       {Footnote: 3: Poseidon} DANAUS

       This next is Hermes, carved in Grecian wise.

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      Then let him herald help to freedom won.

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      Lastly, adore this altar consecrate

       To many lesser gods in one; then crouch

       On holy ground, a flock of doves that flee,

       Scared by no alien hawks, a kin not kind,

       Hateful, and fain of love more hateful still.

       Foul is the bird that rends another bird,

       And foul the men who hale unwilling maids,

       From sire unwilling, to the bridal bed.

       Never on earth, nor in the lower world,

       Shall lewdness such as theirs escape the ban:

       There too, if men say right, a God there is

       Who upon dead men turns their sin to doom,

       To final doom. Take heed, draw hitherward,

       That from this hap your safety ye may win.

       {Enter the KING OF ARGOS.

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      Speak—of what land are ye? No Grecian band

       Is this to whom I speak, with Eastern robes

       And wrappings richly dight: no Argive maid,

       No woman in all Greece such garb doth wear.

       This too gives marvel, how unto this land,

       Unheralded, unfriended, without guide,

       And without fear, ye came? yet wands I see,

       True sign of suppliance, by you laid down

       On shrines of these our gods of festival.

       No land but Greece can read such signs aright.

       Much else there is, conjecture well might guess,

       But let words teach the man who stands to hear.

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      True is the word thou spakest of my garb;

       But speak I unto thee as citizen,

       Or Hermes' wandbearer,

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