“Oceanus. Atqui Prometheu te hoc, tenere existimo
Mederi posse rationem iracundiæ.”
“Prom. Si quidem qui tempestivam medicinam admovens
Non ad gravescens vulnus illidat manus.”
Tusc. Q., III. 31.
“. . . holy Asia weep
For thee, Prometheus.”
Here, and in the epithet of the rivers in the Epode (compare Homer’s Odyssey X. 351, ἱερων ποταμων, and Nägelsbach, Homer, Theologie, p. 85), the original word is ἁγνος, a term to be particularly noted, both in the heathen writers and in the Old Testament, as denoting that religious purity in connection with external objects and outward ceremonies which the Christian sentiment confines exclusively to the moral state of the soul. I have thought it important, in all cases, to retain the Greek phrase, and not by modernizing to dilute it. The religious sentiment in connection with external nature is what the moderns generally do not understand, and least of all the English, whose piety does not readily exhibit itself beyond the precincts of the church porch. The Germans, in this regard, have a much more profound sympathy with the Greek mind.