Æschylos Tragedies and Fragments

Ant.* (#asterisk)Yea, from the Gods he gets an honour due.[134 - The words are obscure enough, the point lying, it may be, in their ambiguity. Antigone here, as in the tragedy of Sophocles, pleads that the Gods have pardoned; they still command and love the reverence for the dead, which she is about to show. The herald catches up her words and takes them in another sense, as though all the honour he had met with from the Gods had been defeat, and death, and shame, as the reward of his sacrilege. Another rendering, however, gives —“Yes, so the Gods have done with honouring him.”]

Her. It was not so till he this land attacked.

Ant. He, suffering evil, evil would repay.

Her. Not against one his arms were turned, but all.

Ant. Strife is the last of Gods to end disputes:
Him I will bury; talk no more of it.

Her. Choose for thyself then, I forbid the deed.

Chor. Alas! alas! alas!
Ye haughty boasters, race-destroying,
Now Fates and now Erinnyes, smiting
The sons of Œdipus, ye slew them,
With a root-and-branch destruction.
What shall I then do, what suffer?
What shall I devise in counsel?
How should I dare nor to weep thee,
Nor escort thee to the burial?
But I tremble and I shrink from
All the terrors which they threatened,
They who are my fellow-townsmen.
Many mourners thou (looking to the bier of Eteocles) shalt meet with;
But he, lost one, unlamented,
With his sister's wailing only
Passeth. Who with this complieth?

Semi-Chor. A. Let the city doom or not doom
Those who weep for Polyneikes;
We will go, and we will bury,
Maidens we in sad procession;
For the woe to all is common,
And our State with voice uncertain,
Of the claims of Right and Justice;
Hither, thither, shifts its praises.

Semi-Chor. B. We will thus, our chief attending,
Speak, as speaks the State, our praises:
Of the claims of Right and Justice;[135 - The words are probably a protest against the changeableness of the Athenian demos, as seen especially in their treatment of Aristeides.]
For next those the Blessed Rulers,
And the strength of Zeus, he chiefly
Saved the city of Cadmeians
From the doom of fell destruction,
From the doom of whelming utter,
In the flood of alien warriors.

    [Exeunt Antigone and Semi-Chorus A., following
    the corpse of Polyneikes; Ismene
    and Semi-Chorus B. that of Eteocles.

PROMETHEUS BOUND

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Prometheus

Hermes

Okeanos

Strength

Hephæstos

Force

Chorus of Ocean Nymphs

ARGUMENT. – In the old time, when Cronos was sovereign of the Gods, Zeus, whom he had begotten, rose up against him, and the Gods were divided in their counsels, some, the Titans chiefly, siding with the father, and some with the son. And Prometheus, the son of Earth or Themis, though one of the Titans, supported Zeus, as did also Okeanos, and by his counsels Zeus obtained the victory, and Cronos was chained in Tartaros, and the Titans buried under mountains, or kept in bonds in Hades. And then Prometheus, seeing the miseries of the race of men, of whom Zeus took little heed, stole the fire which till then had belonged to none but Hephæstos and was used only for the Gods, and gave it to mankind, and taught them many arts whereby their wretchedness was lessened. But Zeus being wroth with Prometheus for this deed, sent Hephæstos, with his two helpers, Strength and Force, to fetter him to a rock on Caucasos.

And in yet another story was the cruelty of the Gods made known. For Zeus loved Io, the daughter of Inachos, king of Argos, and she was haunted by visions of the night, telling her of his passion, and she told her father thereof. And Inachos, sending to the God at Delphi, was told to drive Io forth from her home. And Zeus gave her the horns of a cow, and Hera, who hated her because she was dear to Zeus, sent with her a gadfly that stung her, and gave her no rest, and drove her over many lands.

Note.– The play is believed to have been the second of a Trilogy, of which the first was Prometheus the Fire-giver, and the third Prometheus Unbound.

PROMETHEUS BOUND

Scene. – Skythia, on the heights of Caucasos. The Euxine

seen in the distance

Enter Hephæstos, Strength, and Force, leading

Prometheus in chains[136 - The scene seems at first an exception to the early conventional rule, which forbade the introduction of a third actor on the Greek stage. But it has been noticed that (1) Force does not speak, and (2) Prometheus does not speak till Strength and Force have retired, and that it is therefore probable that the whole work of nailing is done on a lay figure or effigy of some kind, and that one of the two who had before taken part in the dialogue then speaks behind it in the character of Prometheus. So the same actor must have appeared in succession as Okeanos, Io, and Hermes.]

Strength. Lo! to a plain, earth's boundary remote,
We now are come, – the tract as Skythian known,
A desert inaccessible: and now,
Hephæstos, it is thine to do the hests
The Father gave thee, to these lofty crags
To bind this crafty trickster fast in chains
Of adamantine bonds that none can break;
For he thy choice flower stealing, the bright glory
Of fire that all arts spring from, hath bestowed it
On mortal men. And so for fault like this
He now must pay the Gods due penalty,
That he may learn to bear the sovereign rule