SEMI-CHORUS.
Beware, nor slight the gods in speech.
SEMI-CHORUS.
Zeus, hold from my body the wedlock detested, the bridegroom abhorred!
It was thou, it was thou didst release
Mine ancestress Io from sorrow: thine healing it was that restored,
The touch of thine hand gave her peace.
SEMI-CHORUS.
Be thy will for the cause of the maidens! of two ills, the lesser I pray—
The exile that leaveth me pure.
May thy justice have heed to my cause, my prayers to thy mercy find way!
For the hands of thy saving are sure.
[Exeunt omnes.]
[1] “ἀερίας ἀπὸ γᾶς.” This epithet may appear strange to modern readers accustomed to think of Egypt as a land of cloudless skies and pellucid atmosphere. Nevertheless both Pindar (Pyth iv 93) and Apollonius Rhodius (iv 267) speak of it in the same way as Aeschylus. It has been conjectured that they allude to the fog banks that often obscure the low coasts—a phenomenon likely to impress the early navigators and to be reported by them.
[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.
[3] Poseidon.
[4] Here one verse at least has been lost. The conjecture of Bothe seems to be verified, as far as substance is concerned, by the next line, and has consequently been adopted.
[5] Cyprus.
[6] For this curious taunt, strongly illustrative of what Browning calls “nationality in drinks,” see Herodotus, ii. 77. A similar feeling may perhaps be traced in Tacitus’ description of the national beverage of the Germans: “Potui humor ex hordeo aut frumento, in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus” (Germania, chap, xxiii).