“Earth breeds a fearful progeny.”
The sentiment of this chorus was familiar to the ancients, and was suggested with peculiar force to the minds of the tragedians, from the contemplation of those terrible deeds of old traditionary crime, which so often formed the subject of their most popular and most powerful efforts. Sophocles had a famous chorus in the Antigone, beginning in the same strain, though ranging over a wider and a more ennobling field—“πολλὰ τα δεινὰ κ᾽ ουδὲν ανθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.”
“Things of might hath Nature many
In her various plan,
But of daring powers who dareth
Most on Earth is man.”
In imitation of which, the
“Audax omnia perpeti
Gens humana ruit in vetitum nefas”