Supplices
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
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Chorus
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Would that you had perished on your course over the great briny flood
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along with your lordly arrogance and your riveted ship! ...
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Herald
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I order you to stop your shrieking.
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... Ho there! leave the sanctuary: be off to the ship! I do not respect one without honor and city.
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Chorus
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Never again may my eyes behold
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the cattle-nurturing stream from which increase comes to men and vigor of the blood of life. I am a native here, of ancient nobility
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. . . old man.
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Herald
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You will get yourself speedily on board, on board, I say, whether you will or not, by force, by force. . . .
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Herald
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If you will not resign yourself and get to the ship, rending will have no pity on the fabric of your garments.
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Chorus
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We are lost! O King, we are suffering impious violence!l. 908
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Herald
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l. 906Oh, you will soon see many kings in Aegyptus’ sons. Be of good cheer: you will not have to blame lack of government.
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Chorus
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Listen! Chiefs and rulers of the city, I am threatened with violence!l. 905
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Herald
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I think I will have to seize you by the hair and drag you offl. 909
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since you are slow to heed my orders.
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King
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You there! What are you doing? What kind of arrogance has incited you to do such dishonor to this realm of Pelasgian men? Indeed, do you think you have come to a land of women? For a barbarian dealing with Hellenes, you act insolently.
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Many are the misses of your wits, and your hits are none.
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Herald
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And in this case where have I gone wrong and transgressed my right?
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King
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First of all, you do not know how to act as a stranger.
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Herald
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I not know? How so, when I simply find and take my own that I had lost?
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King
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To what patrons of your land was your notice given?
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Herald
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To Hermes, the Searcher, greatest of patrons.
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King
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For all your notice to the gods, you do them no reverence.
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Herald
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I revere the deities by the Nile.
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King
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While ours are nothing, as I understand you?
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Herald
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I shall carry off these maids unless someone tears them away.
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King
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If you so much as touch them, you will regret it, and right soon.
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Herald
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I hear you; and your speech is far from hospitable.
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King
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No, since I have no hospitality for despoilers of the gods.
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Herald
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I will go and tell Aegyptus’ sons about this.
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King
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My proud spirit will not ponder on this threat.
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Herald
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But that I may know and tell a plainer tale —for it is fitting that a herald make exact report on each detail—what message am I to deliver? Who is it, am I to tell on my return, that has despoiled me of this band of women, their own cousins? It is not, I suppose, by voice of witnesses that the god of battle judges cases like this;
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nor is it by the gift of silver that he settles dispute; no! If that be the case, many a one shall fall and shuffle off his life.
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King
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My name? Why should I tell you? In due course of time you will learn it, you and your companions.
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As for these maids, if, convinced by god-fearing argument, they consent of their own free will and heartily, you may take them. But to this purpose a decree has been passed by the unanimous resolve of the people of the State, never, under compulsion, to surrender this association of women. Through their resolve
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the rivet has been driven home, to remain fixed and fast. Not on tablets is this inscribed, nor has it been sealed in folds of books: you hear the truth from free-spoken lips. Now get out of my sight immediately!
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Herald
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I think we are about to involve ourselves in a new war. But may victory and authority rest with the men!
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King
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It is men, I believe, you will find in the dwellers of this land; and they are no drinkers of diluted wine. Exit Herald. But
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take courage, all of you, and together with your handmaidens, proceed to our well-fenced town, encircled by sturdy devices of towers. As for places inside to lodge, there are plenty of the public sort. For on no modest scale do I myself live, where,
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in company with many others, you may occupy abodes suitably prepared; or, if it is more pleasing to you, it is free for you also to make your home in dwellings of separate sort. Of these select what is best and most to your desires. A protector you have in me and in all the inhabitants, whose resolve this is that now takes effect.
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Why wait for others of higher authority?
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Chorus
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In blessings may you abound, noble Pelasgian, in requital for your blessings! But, if it pleases you, send our brave father Danaus here to be our adviser
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and leader of our counsels. For it befits him, rather than ourselves, to advise us where we should establish our home and what neighborhood is friendly. All the world is ready to cast reproach on those who speak a foreign tongue. But may all be for the best! Exit the King.
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And you, dear handmaidens, preserving your fair fame and provoking no angry utterances on the part of the native folk, take up your stations even as Danaus has allotted her duty of attendance unto each.
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Danaus
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My children, it is right to offer prayers to the Argives and to sacrifice and pour libations to them as to Olympian gods; for they are our saviors in no doubtful manner. They heard from my lips the conduct of your cousins toward their own kinfolk, and were moved to bitterness against them;
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but to me they assigned this escort of spearmen, that I might have rank and honor, and might not be ambushed and perish by the death of the spear, and so an ever-living burden come upon the land. Recipients of such favors as these,
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it becomes us to hold gratitude in yet higher honor from the bottom of our hearts. And in addition to the many other wise injunctions of your father recorded in your memory, inscribe this too—that an unknown company is proved by time. For in an alien’s case, all the world bears an evil tongue in readiness,
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and it is easy lightly to utter defiling slander. Therefore I would have you bring no shame upon me, now when your youthful loveliness attracts men’s gaze. The tender ripeness of summer fruit is in no way easy to protect; beasts despoil it—and men, why not?—
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and brutes that fly and those that walk the earth. Love’s goddess spreads news abroad of fruit bursting ripe. . . . So all men, as they pass,
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mastered by desire, shoot an alluring arrow of the eye at the delicate beauty of virgins. See to it, therefore, that we do not suffer that in fear for which we have endured great toil and ploughed the great waters with our ship; and that we bring no shame to ourselves and exultation to our enemies. Housing of two kinds is at our disposition,
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the one Pelasgus offers, the other, the city, and to occupy free of cost. These terms are easy. Only pay heed to these behests of your father, and count your chastity more precious than your life.
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Chorus
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May the Olympian gods grant us good fortune in all the rest!
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But, concerning the bloom of my virginity, father, be of good cheer, for, unless some evil has been devised of Heaven, I will not swerve from the former pathway of my thoughts.
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Chorus of the Danaids
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Come now away, glorifying the blessed gods, lords of the city both those who guard the town
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and those who dwell about Erasinus’ ancient stream. And you handmaidens take up the song. Let the theme of our praise be this city of the Pelasgians, and no longer
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let the homage of our hymns be paid to Nile’s floods where they seek the sea,
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Chorus of the Danaids
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But to the rivers that pour their gentle draught through the land and increase the birth of children, soothing its soil with their fertilizing streams.
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May pure Artemis look upon this band in compassion, and may marriage never come through Cytherea’s compulsion. May that prize belong to my enemies!
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Chorus
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Now if by chance there be some neighbor in the land who knows the song of birds,
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when our complaint greets his ear, he will fancy that he hears the voice of Metis, Tereus’ piteous wife, the hawk-chased nightingale.
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Chorus
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For she, constrained to leave her green leaves, laments pitifully her accustomed haunts,
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and composes the tale of her own child’s doom—how he perished, destroyed by her own hand, victim of the wrath of an unnatural mother.
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Chorus
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That the mighty race of our honorable mother escape the embrace of man (ah me), unwedded, unvanquished.
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Chorus
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That the mighty race of our honorable mother may escape the embrace of man (ah me), unwedded, unvanquished.
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Chorus
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You are the state, you are the people. Being subject to no judge, you rule the altar, your country’s hearth by your will’s sole ordinance; and, enthroned in sole sovereignty,
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you determine every issue. Beware pollution!
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King
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Pollution on my enemies! But without harm I do not know how to help you. And yet again, it is not well advised to slight these supplications. I am perplexed, and fear possesses my soul
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whether to act, or not to act and take what fortune sends.
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Chorus
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Look to him who looks down from above, to him, the guardian of mortals sore-distressed, who appeal to their neighbors, yet do not obtain the justice that is their right.
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The wrath of Zeus, the suppliant’s god, remains, and will not be softened by a sufferer’s complaints.
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King
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If the sons of Aegyptus have authority over you by the law of your country claiming that they are nearest of kin, who would wish to contest it?
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You must plead in accordance with the laws of the land you have fled, that they have no authority over you.
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Chorus
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I have come here to the prints of ancient feet, my mother’s, even to the region where she was watched while she browsed among the flowers—
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into that pasture, from which Io, tormented by the gad-fly’s sting, fled in frenzy, traversing many tribes of men, and
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according to fate, cut in two the surging strait, marking off the land upon the farther shore.
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Chorus
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And through the land of Asia she gallops, straight through sheep-pasturing Phrygia, and she passes the city of Teuthras among the Mysians,
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and the hollow vales of Lydia, across the mountains of the Cilicians and the Pamphylians, speeding over ever-flowing rivers and earth deep and rich, and
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the land of Aphrodite that teems with wheat.
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Chorus
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Therefore let there fly forth from our overshadowedOvershadowed by the suppliant branches, which, though now laid on the altar (l. 507), are still in imagination held before the faces of the maidens.lips a prayer of gratitude. Never may pestilence
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empty this city of its men nor strife stain the soil of the land with the blood of slain inhabitants. But may the flower of its youth be unplucked, and may Ares,
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the partner of Aphrodite’s bed, he who makes havoc of men, not shear off their bloom.
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Chorus
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And may the altars, where the elders gather, blaze in honor of venerable men.
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Thus may their state be regulated well, if they hold in awe mighty Zeus, and, most of all, Zeus the warden of the guest, who by venerable enactment guides destiny straight.
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We pray that other guardians be always renewed, and that Artemis-HecateArtemis and Hecate were identified in Attic cult as early as the fifth century B.C. Cp. Corp. Inscr. Att. 1.208. The epithet ἑκάτη far-darter, archer was, it seems, not applied as a common adjective to Artemis.watch over the childbirth of their women.
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They are of evil mind, and guileful of purpose, with impure hearts, thinking no more of altars than carrion birds.
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Danaus
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This would profit us well, my children, should they incur both Heaven’s hate and yours.
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Chorus
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Father, no fear of tridents or of things held sacred in the sight of Heaven will ever keep their hands from us.
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They are overweening, maddened, with unholy rage, shameless dogs that do not respect the gods.
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Chorus
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Ah that somewhere in the upper air I might find a seat against which the dank clouds turn into snow, or some bare, inaccessible crag,
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beyond sight, brooding in solitude, beetling, vulture-haunted, to bear witness to my plunge into the depths before I am ever forced into a marriage that would pierce my heart!
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Chorus
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Thereafter I refuse not to become a booty for dogs and a banquet for the local birds; for death is freedom from misery-loving evils. Come death, death be my doom,
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before the marriage-bed! How can I yet find some means of escape to deliver me from marriage?
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Chorus
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Alas, alas! So may you perish past all help, driven from your course over the surging waves by eastern breezes off
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the sandy tomb of Sarpedon!
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Herald
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Wail and shout and call upon the gods—you will not escape the Egyptian ship.
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Cry out, utter a strain of woe more bitter still.
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Chorus
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Alas, alas the brutal outrage with which, you crocodile, you boast arrogantly, bellowing on the sea. May the mighty
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Nile, who watches you, overwhelm your arrogance and destroy you.
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Herald
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Go to the double-prowed ship as quickly as possible. Let no one delay, for dragging by force has no mercy on locks of hair.
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Chorus of Handmaidens
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Yet there is no disdain of Cypris in this our friendly hymn;
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for she, together with Hera, holds power nearest to Zeus, and for her solemn rites the goddess of varied wiles is held in honor. And in the train of their mother are Desire and she to whom nothing is denied,