Procne and Philomele, according to one of the most familiar of old Greek legends, were daughters of Pandion, king of Athens; and one of them having been given in marriage to Tereus, a king of the Thracians, in Daulis, who, after the marriage, offered violence to her sister—the result was, that the wife, in a fit of mad revenge, murdered her own son Itys, and gave his flesh to her husband to eat; and, being afterwards changed into a nightingale, was supposed in her melodious wail continually to repeat the name of this her luckless offspring.
“The thick blossoms of its woe.”
ἀμφιθαλῆ κακοῖς βίον. I hope this expression will not be considered too strong by those who consider as well the general style of our poet, as the ὁρῶμεν ἀνθουν πέλαγος Ἀιγᾶιον νεκρ(ο)ις, v. 645 of this play (see my translation, supra, [p. 61]), and the μανίας δεινόν ὰποστάζει ἀνθηρόν τε μένος of Sophocles.—Antig. v. 960.
“Soon my reeking heart shall cast.”
If the reader thinks this a bold phrase, he must bear in mind that it is Cassandra who speaks, and Æschylus who writes. The translation, indeed, is not literal, but the word “θερμόνους,” as Con. says, “has all the marks of genuineness,” and I was more afraid of weakening it in translation than of exaggerating it. Other translations are—
“And I my warm blood soon on earth shall pour.”—Sym.
“But I shall soon press my hot heart to Earth.”—Con.
“Ich aber stúrze bald zur Erd im heissen Kampf.”—Fr.