Supplices
Aeschylus
Aeschylus, Volume 1. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922.
- And it is easy then, if things go ill, to separate from a wife.
- How then am I to deal with you in accordance with my sacred duty?
- By not surrendering us at the demand of Aegyptus’ sons.
- A serious request—to take upon myself a dangerous war.
- But Justice protects her champions.
- True, if she had a share in the matter from the beginning.
- Show reverence for the ship of state thus crowned.[*](The gods, whose statues have been wreathed with the suppliants’ branches, are regarded as the pilots who direct the ship of state. Possibly there is also a reference to the custom of crowning a vessel’s stern with flowers.)
- I shrink as I gaze upon these shaded shrines.
- Yet heavy is the wrath of Zeus, god of the suppliant.
- Son of Palaechthon, lord of the Pelasgians, hear me with a benign heart.
- Behold me, your suppliant, a fugitive, running around like a heifer chased by wolves upon precipitous crags, where, confident in his help, she lows to tell the herdsman of her distress.
- I see
- a company of assembled gods assenting beneath the shade of fresh-plucked boughs. Nevertheless may this affair of claimants to the friendship of our city bring no mischief in its wake! And let no feud come upon the state from causes unforeseen and unforestalled; for the state has no need of such trouble.
- Indeed,
- may Justice, daughter of Zeus the Apportioner, Justice who protects the suppliant, look upon our flight that it bring no mischief in its wake. But you, aged in experience, learn from one of younger birth. If you show mercy to a suppliant ... from a man of holiness.
- It is not my own house at whose hearth you sit. If the state is stained by pollution in its commonalty, in common let the people strive to work out the cure. For myself, I will pledge no promise before I have communicated these events to all the citizens.
- You are the state, you are the people. Being subject to no judge, you rule the altar, your country’s hearth by your will’s sole ordinance; and, enthroned in sole sovereignty,
- you determine every issue. Beware pollution!
- Pollution on my enemies! But without harm I do not know how to help you. And yet again, it is not well advised to slight these supplications. I am perplexed, and fear possesses my soul
- whether to act, or not to act and take what fortune sends.