Supplices

Aeschylus

Aeschylus, Volume 1. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922.

  1. Ah that somewhere in the upper air I might find a seat against which the dank clouds turn into snow, or some bare, inaccessible crag,
  2. beyond sight, brooding in solitude, beetling, vulture-haunted, to bear witness to my plunge into the depths before I am ever forced into a marriage that would pierce my heart!
Chorus
  1. Thereafter I refuse not to become a booty for dogs and a banquet for the local birds; for death is freedom from misery-loving evils. Come death, death be my doom,
  2. before the marriage-bed! How can I yet find some means of escape to deliver me from marriage?
Chorus
  1. Shriek aloud, with a cry that reaches heaven, strains of supplication to the gods;
  2. O father, give heed that they are somehow accomplished to my safety and tranquility. Behold deeds of violence with no kind glance in your just eyes!
  3. Have respect for your suppliants, O Zeus, omnipotent upholder of the land!
Chorus
  1. For the males of the race of Aegyptus, intolerable in their wantonness, chase after me,
  2. a fugitive, with clamorous lewdness and seek to lay hold of me with violence. But yours alone is the beam of the balance, and without you what is accomplished for mortals?
  1. Ho! Ha! Here on the land is the pirate from the ship! Before that, pirate, may you perish . . .
  2. I see in this the prelude of suffering wrought by violence. Oh! Oh! Fly for protection! Savagery beyond bearing by its insolence on sea and land alike.
  3. Lord of the land, protect us!
  1. Away with you, away to the ship, as fast as your feet can carry you! If you won’t, your hair shall be torn out; you’ll be pricked with goads, and off will come your heads
  2. with abundant letting of gory blood. Away with you, away—and curses on you!—to the ships.
  1. Would that you had perished on your course over the great briny flood
  2. along with your lordly arrogance and your riveted ship! ...
  1. I order you to stop your shrieking.
  2. ... Ho there! leave the sanctuary: be off to the ship! I do not respect one without honor and city.
  1. Never again may my eyes behold
  2. the cattle-nurturing stream from which increase comes to men and vigor of the blood of life. I am a native here, of ancient nobility